ALICUDI
FILICUDI
PANAREA
STROMBOLI
SALINA
VULCANO
LIPARI
Today I want to start talking to you about the Aeolian Islands, an archipelago of which much has been said and written about, if you take a look around the web you will find certainly a lot of material.
The illustration that I will make is that of someone who has lived them for about 20 years, with their charm and their suggestions. The image that I will give you will mainly describe the most mysterious aspects of this wonderful archipelago, with particular attention to the character of each island and the colors they express.
In my long travels I have been to visit several Greek islands, but what one perceives in seeing them is their extreme similarity.
All this is absolutely not true for the Aeolian Islands, each island has different characteristics and expresses its own personality. Every single island knows how to express its uniqueness, almost as if it wanted to compete, like so many prima donnas, in the vanity of the daily scenic representation of nature; but the strong interest is catalysed, also by all those legends, halfway between popular tradition and historical reality, which are still handed down today in the islands of fire and wind.
All of Sicily breathes millennia of history, often intertwined with myth, but in the Aeolian Islands it is easy to confuse legend with reality, so naturally the tales of fishermen who speak of fairies appear heroes or divine entities, where their love for their land shines through, while at times one can remain incredulous in the face of true stories lost in the mists of time and with a surprisingly unusual plot.
Already in the origins of their name, the Aeolian betray their mythical genesis; it is Homer's Odyssey that tells us that the islands are the home of the god of the winds, Aeolus.
Aeolus, narrates the Odyssey, kept the winds inside some wineskins; she lived together with his 12 children (six males and six females, married to each other) in the islands of Sicily which took their name from him the Aeolian Islands.
After welcoming Ulysses, he gave him the winds closed in a skin, which his companions carelessly opened, thinking he guarded a treasure, thus causing a furious storm that made the ship return towards the Aeolian Islands: Aeolus, believing that Ulysses was persecuted by the gods, refused to help him and sent him away from the islands.
In reality, the Aeolian Islands strong> born in successive stages as submarine volcanoes almost two million years ago, but have been inhabited since the end of the fifth millennium BC. by populations coming from Sicily and settled in Lipari, Salina and Filicudi to exploit the economic resource of obsidian, erupted from Monte Pelato, on the coast North East of Lipari.
Obsidian, a sort of black and shiny natural glass, strange as it may seem, has the same chemical composition as white pumice, from which it differs only in its glassy rather than spongy state, generated by the sudden decrease in the temperature of the lava flow in the terminal phase of the eruptions.
My judgment may perhaps appear excessive, but from the moment you disembark on the Aeolian Islands, you will have the distinct sensation of being in a magical place, with over 6,000 years of history and with a thousand legends so fascinating as to confuse reality with myth.
And here ends my brief introduction to the magical world of the Aeolian Islands, which you can learn more about in this blog by reading the other posts that will talk about each island individually.
The illustration that I will make is that of someone who has lived them for about 20 years, with their charm and their suggestions. The image that I will give you will mainly describe the most mysterious aspects of this wonderful archipelago, with particular attention to the character of each island and the colors they express.
In my long travels I have been to visit several Greek islands, but what one perceives in seeing them is their extreme similarity.
All this is absolutely not true for the Aeolian Islands, each island has different characteristics and expresses its own personality. Every single island knows how to express its uniqueness, almost as if it wanted to compete, like so many prima donnas, in the vanity of the daily scenic representation of nature; but the strong interest is catalysed, also by all those legends, halfway between popular tradition and historical reality, which are still handed down today in the islands of fire and wind.
All of Sicily breathes millennia of history, often intertwined with myth, but in the Aeolian Islands it is easy to confuse legend with reality, so naturally the tales of fishermen who speak of fairies appear heroes or divine entities, where their love for their land shines through, while at times one can remain incredulous in the face of true stories lost in the mists of time and with a surprisingly unusual plot.
Already in the origins of their name, the Aeolian betray their mythical genesis; it is Homer's Odyssey that tells us that the islands are the home of the god of the winds, Aeolus.
Aeolus, narrates the Odyssey, kept the winds inside some wineskins; she lived together with his 12 children (six males and six females, married to each other) in the islands of Sicily which took their name from him the Aeolian Islands.
After welcoming Ulysses, he gave him the winds closed in a skin, which his companions carelessly opened, thinking he guarded a treasure, thus causing a furious storm that made the ship return towards the Aeolian Islands: Aeolus, believing that Ulysses was persecuted by the gods, refused to help him and sent him away from the islands.
In reality, the Aeolian Islands strong> born in successive stages as submarine volcanoes almost two million years ago, but have been inhabited since the end of the fifth millennium BC. by populations coming from Sicily and settled in Lipari, Salina and Filicudi to exploit the economic resource of obsidian, erupted from Monte Pelato, on the coast North East of Lipari.
Obsidian, a sort of black and shiny natural glass, strange as it may seem, has the same chemical composition as white pumice, from which it differs only in its glassy rather than spongy state, generated by the sudden decrease in the temperature of the lava flow in the terminal phase of the eruptions.
My judgment may perhaps appear excessive, but from the moment you disembark on the Aeolian Islands, you will have the distinct sensation of being in a magical place, with over 6,000 years of history and with a thousand legends so fascinating as to confuse reality with myth.
And here ends my brief introduction to the magical world of the Aeolian Islands, which you can learn more about in this blog by reading the other posts that will talk about each island individually.
