You're trying to mix mixing oldschool scriptlets with modern EL. This is not going to work. EL searches for variables as attributes in page, request, session and application scopes. It does not search for variables declared in (global) scriptlet scope at all.
In order to prepare variables for EL, you need to set it as an attribute in the desired scope. Normally, you'd use a servlet or filter for this, or maybe a request/session/context listener, but for quick prototyping you might still want to use an old fashioned scriptlet. Here's an example which puts it in the request scope:
<%
String[] strings = { "happy", "in 7th heaven", "on cloud 8" };
request.setAttribute("strings", strings);
%>
See also: