diff --git a/GPy/core/variational.py b/GPy/core/variational.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..74287dcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/GPy/core/variational.py
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+'''
+Created on 6 Nov 2013
+
+@author: maxz
+'''
+from parameterized import Parameterized
+from parameter import Param
+
+class Normal(Parameterized):
+    '''
+    Normal distribution for variational approximations.
+    
+    holds the means and variances for a factorizing multivariate normal distribution
+    '''
+    def __init__(self, name, means, variances):
+        Parameterized.__init__(self, name=name)
+        self.means = Param("mean", means)
+        self.variances = Param('variance', variances)
+        self.add_parameters(self.means, self.variances)
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