The Boy Who Spoke a Forgotten Language That No Human Should Know — Scientists Are Still Searching for Answers

In the quiet outskirts of Bergen, Norway, in the spring of 2014, a seven-year-old boy named Elias became the subject of one of the most baffling linguistic and neurological mysteries ever recorded.

Born to Norwegian parents and raised in a monolingual household, Elias began speaking fluently in a language that no one—not his family, teachers, or even linguists—could identify.

What started as a curiosity soon spiraled into a full-blown scientific enigma that has since challenged everything we thought we knew about human cognition, memory, and possibly, the nature of consciousness itself.

At first, his parents, Anne and Markus Nilsen, thought their son was simply inventing words in play.

“He used to sit by the window and mutter phrases we couldn’t understand,” Anne recalled.

“We thought it was just a child’s imagination—until he started writing.

” When Elias began drawing strange symbols and writing coherent patterns that didn’t match any alphabet known to his teachers, the family reached out to the University of Bergen for help.

Dr.Ingrid Halvorsen, a professor of linguistics specializing in ancient dialects, was the first to respond.

After weeks of analysis, she was left stunned.

“The sounds, syntax, and structure of Elias’s speech didn’t match any modern or historical language.

It bore traits of Proto-Indo-European roots but also contained phonetic constructions we’ve never seen before,” she explained.

To make matters stranger, Elias seemed unaware that he was doing anything unusual.

When asked to translate his words, Elias said softly, “It’s the voice that speaks when I sleep.

” Researchers initially assumed this was a form of glossolalia—“speaking in tongues”—a phenomenon sometimes linked to psychological or neurological conditions.

However, brain scans revealed something far more extraordinary.

During speech, Elias’s brain activity mirrored that of an adult polyglot processing multiple linguistic codes simultaneously.

“It was as if his mind was referencing an ancient database of language that no living person had ever learned,” said Dr.

Halvorsen.

In 2015, an interdisciplinary team including neurologists, anthropologists, and historians gathered to study the boy under controlled conditions.

They played him recordings of various extinct languages, including Sumerian, Aramaic, and Sanskrit.

To their astonishment, Elias reacted emotionally to several of them, claiming he “understood the sadness in their words.

” He then began to chant a sequence that matched fragments of a 5,000-year-old funerary hymn found in a Mesopotamian temple inscription—something impossible for anyone to know without years of specialized training.

The discovery drew international attention.

While some skeptics accused the researchers of exaggeration or hoax, others believed Elias could be exhibiting xenoglossy—a controversial phenomenon where individuals speak or understand a language they have never been exposed to.

Cases of xenoglossy have been recorded throughout history, often linked to alleged reincarnation experiences or unexplained psychological phenomena.

But Elias’s case defied even that.

His language evolved over time, growing in complexity.

Linguists began cataloging his speech into what they now call “The Bergen Code.

” It contains over 800 identifiable words and grammatical structures, none of which correspond to any existing language family.

In one recorded session, Elias spoke for nearly twenty minutes, describing “a land where the stars sing and the rivers glow”—phrases that eerily resembled mythological depictions from ancient Sumerian texts.

Then, in late 2017, Elias suddenly stopped speaking the mysterious language.

When asked why, he replied only, “They told me it’s time to forget.

” From that moment on, he reverted to speaking only Norwegian.

He couldn’t remember any of the words, symbols, or phrases he had once uttered fluently.

Scientists were devastated.

Years of study ended abruptly, leaving more questions than answers.

Yet what happened next deepened the mystery further.

During a follow-up brain scan in 2018, researchers found that Elias’s brain showed residual neural patterns associated with linguistic activity—structures similar to those found in individuals who have mastered multiple ancient and modern languages.

However, he retained no conscious memory of any of it.

Today, the so-called “Bergen Phenomenon” remains one of the most debated topics in linguistic and cognitive science.

Some experts argue that Elias’s case suggests an unknown genetic memory mechanism—perhaps the transmission of ancestral linguistic data encoded in human DNA.

Others believe it points to something more metaphysical: collective consciousness or even echoes of past lives manifesting through speech.

Elias, now eighteen, lives quietly with his parents.

He avoids media attention, though local journalists have occasionally spotted him at the University of Bergen’s library, studying ancient history.

When asked recently if he remembered anything about his childhood language, he smiled faintly and said, “Sometimes I still hear it—in my dreams.”

For scientists, the mystery of the boy who spoke a language that shouldn’t exist remains unsolved.

Was it an unexplainable neurological phenomenon, or a glimpse into something beyond the boundaries of science and time? One thing is certain: the human mind, and whatever ancient memories it might hold, still has secrets we have barely begun to uncover