Too soon

I have to say I agree with you Mike .

There is a distinct hint of Norwegian and/ or Egyptian etymology in the 340.

IBF

It would be "too soon" if I hijacked their thread with my observations. But I didn’t. I started my own thread under the subject of my own suspect. If people don’t want to read what I think, they can simply move on to a different thread. What’s with this "too soon" stuff?

I have to say I agree with you Mike .

There is a distinct hint of Norwegian and/ or Egyptian etymology in the 340.

IBF

He could have also had an interest in Egyptian culture, history, etc

Mike, do you have any reason to believe that Qvale was skilled or interested in cryptography?

I have to say I agree with you Mike .

There is a distinct hint of Norwegian and/ or Egyptian etymology in the 340.

IBF

He could have also had an interest in Egyptian culture, history, etc

That’s what I posted…? Etymology is a “ study of”.

Great work by everyone and hopefully this brings us closer to closure of this case.

No. No knowledge of an interest in crypto.

Something else that I noticed. Zodiac says he has enough slaves to "work" for him in Paradice. This reeks of someone who is accustomed to employing people as a boss, not some loser compensating for his feelings of inadequacy.

A propos of that, Eduard V. from The Netherlands wrote to me this AM and the people over there are posting saying that they sense that Z was not some loser living with his mom and that he possibly had a military background and came from a wealthy family. And these are presumably regular people, not folks who follow the case or have an axe to grind.

Hi,

When I first saw the solution to the 340 today, I thought, "Ho-hum. Z did not even tell us his name lol." But then I thought about it more and it seems he may have revealed something important about himself in the 340 after all.

First off, I want to point out a linguistic quirk I noticed in the solution. He says, "…I hope you have having lots of fun IN trying to figure out…" A lot of people would not include the word "in" in that context. This might be something to look for in the writings of the real Z.

OK. So I think I won’t be shouted down when I say that Z went through a lot of trouble to hide this message from us. I hope that the fact that it took 51 years to solve the code serves as proof of that notion. And what does he go on about in this message he may not really have wanted us to see? Slaves in the afterlife and Paradice.

I could have been persuaded that slaves in the afterlife was a concept that Z glommed onto but in which he really didn’t take much stock when push came to shove. But now? It seems that this concept was front and center in his mind to the point where he felt that the reason others fear death is that they have not saved up enough slaves to serve them in Paradice. But he has. By hook or by crook, this is the main focus of his 340 message. And who is likely to have been aware of an invested in such a concept?

One possibility is someone of Norse ancestr,y who was heavily influenced by the Vikings and their culture.

When Jim and I met with KQ in 2006, I asked him about his ties to Norse culture and he went out of his way to tell me it was pretty irrelevant to him. But then I started learning things. For instance, when KQ turned 90 in 2009, in an article that is still available on sfgate by Scott Ostler (7/29/09). In the article, Ostler said that Qvale "dressed like a Viking and danced the night away." And in the 2012 book, Lunches With Mr. Q, it says that over the years KQ and his wife had hosted parties where people dressed up in traditional Norwegian clothes. Norse culture rears its head once again.

So while the solution to the 340 does not single Qvale out, it certainly continues to point the needle in his direction, as opposed to suspects with no known and provable ties to the concept of slaves in the afterlife.

Mike

Hello Mike,

As a Norwegian, I can offer some thoughts on what could be indicative of an above average interest in Viking and Norse culture, although KQ and I are of different generations and were born in different districts. The Viking helmet is often used by sport fans and in similar "fun" settings as a marker, along with the national flag, without this having any larger significance. Very often, the helmet has horns, which is actually historically inaccurate. Occasionally someone will dress up with the full attire. The only ones who might take it somewhat more seriously are people who use it in different kinds of historical plays and enactments. As for an interst in Norse mythology, language and religion, only quite few people will have more than a rudimentary knowledge of this. Most people will be familiar with names like Tor, Odin, Hugin and Munin, Loke and Balder, though.

It would also be interesting to know wether the traditional Norwegian clothes used at Qvale’s parties were actually modeled on the Norse era. Usually it is not.

It is my impression that in between the world wars, there was a more widespread interest in Norse worldviews, religion and myths than there is today. I believe this coincided with an increased interest in things like spirituality, paranormal phenomena and the like.

I don’t know how much you can really read into it. The Zodiac was regularly sardonic and mocking in much of his other writing, so there’s every reason to believe the message contained in the Z340 is just him yanking our chains. Still it’s worth considering that he may have been serious. I don’t see why ideas about the afterlife in 1960’s America would need to be associated with any particular culture, or religion, you’d have a harder time finding spiritual beliefs that didn’t contain these concepts.

"…I hope you have having lots of fun IN trying to figure out…"

That is interesting. It strikes me as a pendantic manner of writing. It’s a little more "proper", upper class maybe, or it could be someone who likes to sound intelligent. If I saw it in a modern context, I’d think "pseudo-intellectual". It just sounds more pretentious written that way.

It could be an example of one of the many "Briticisms" used by the Zodiac. My own theory is that he used them because he was wanky pseudo-intellectual type. I think it goes with his sardonic tone. But others think it could point to a certain nationality. I just read it in the context of all that sarcasm and attention seeking behavior and think "wanker". I bet he thought he was a real smarty pants with all his codes and musical theatre nonsense and it creeps into the writing style in the form of pedantic sentences. I mean he’s very didactic too, always lecturing us on how he built his bomb and how he committed his murders and how to solve them. It’s consistent with that kind of pretentious personality type, always having to explain themselves to prove how smart they are. So adding a superfluous word to a sentence just seems to fit his personality.

"…I hope you have having lots of fun IN trying to figure out…"

Expressing the same sentence in Norwegian you would almost certainly use a preposition here, although it should be the Norwegian equivalent of "with", which is "med". Many Norwegians wrongly or unnecessarily fill in prepositions in English when it would have been natural to use them in Norwegian.

Hi Pal,

Interesting.

Hi guys,

I agree with pal on this. I’m a non native English speaking person from the Netherlands. I see people originating from the Northern parts of Europe (Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia) do that while writing in English. It is because all their languages are based upon the North Germanic language of centuries ago and not on Anglo-Saxon which English is based upon.

Just saw the November post by Pal now lol. Didn’t they mention a specific type of Norse clothing that started with "Bund" or something? I’d imagine that if KQ did get dressed up, being from Norway he did it right lol. He also dressed as a Viking for his 90th birthday. An article in the Chron from July 2009 talks about it.