Huginn e Muninn

Lo scorso 6 aprile avevo segnalato un seminario su Omero nel Baltico, organizzato dall’Università Roma Tre. Adesso, a ulteriore riprova della crescente diffusione della rivoluzionaria tesi di Felice Vinci, vengo a sapere che anche in Finlandia è in programma un ampio seminario sulla tesi dell’ingegnere romano, che riconduce l’origine dei poemi omerici alle regioni del nord Europa. Ecco un estratto del programma, che si può leggere nella versione completa sul sito internet kiskoseura: INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR Toija, Finland, 10 August 2007 Toija and the roots of European civilization Scientific workshop chaired by Giuliana Bendelli (University of Milan) The workshop takes place in Toija in South-western Finland, where the oldest traces of human habitation have been found in Finland. The workshop aims at discussing the theory expounded by Felice Vinci in Omero nel Baltico, a book (translated into English with the title Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales: The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Migration of Myth) in which the author assumes that the real scene of the Iliad and the Odyssey can be identified, not in the Mediterranean Sea where it proves to be undermined by many incongruities, but in the north of Europe. The sagas that gave rise to the two poems came from the Baltic regions, where the Bronze age flourished in the 2nd millennium BC, and many Homeric places, such as Troy and Ithaca, can still be identified. The blond seafarers who founded the Mycenaean civilization in the 16th century BC brought these tales from Scandinavia to Greece after the decline of the “climatic optimum”. There they rebuilt their original world, where the Trojan War and many other mythological events had taken place. The memory of the heroic age and the feats performed by their ancestors in their lost homeland was preserved and handed down to the following ages through many generations. This oral tradition was given a written form in the VIII Century BC, when alphabetical symbols were introduced into Greece. Vinci’s theory proposes a different perspective on Homeric geography and has suggested to a group of scientists of the University of Pavia (Italy), who have been studying archaeological material by means of multi-analytical techniques, the chance of carrying out multidisciplinary research in order to verify this challenging hypothesis. Such research is led by Professor Bruno Messiga, a geologist who is also the Director of CISRiC (Inter-departmental Centre of Studies and Research for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage). Workshop programme 13.00 Giuliana Bendelli (University of Milan) The slow melting of the “Hibernated” Ulysses 13.30 Felice Vinci (Author of Omero nel Baltico) Homer in the Baltic 14.00 Piero Boitani (University of Rome) The Shadow of Ulysses 15.00 William Mullen (University of New York) Vinci’s Homotopes: Clusters and Analogies 15.30 Ilze Rumniece (University of Riga) The Greek "kouretes" and the Baltic "kuri" 16.00 Giacomo Tripodi (University of Messina) Considerations on Charybdis 16.30 Federico Di Trocchio (University of Rome) New Ideas and their Destiny: An historical overview 17.00 Alessandra Giumlia-Mair (archaeologist) Bronze Age in Northern Europe: ores and metal objects 17.30 Final panel chaired by Professor Bruno Messiga and Professor Maria Pia Riccardi, geologists at the University of Pavia (Italy), who discuss the importance and opportunity of further investigating the theory with the cooperation of local experts. This hypothesis has already aroused a worldwide interest: in 2004, the Academy of Science of Saint Petersburg presented the Russian version of Vinci’s book; in 2005, an English version was published in America and the book, whose title is Baltic Origins of Homer’s Epic Tales: The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Migration of Myth, appears in the current syllabus of the upper level "Homer" course at Bard College, New York. Many are the scholars who have already expressed their favourable opinions and several are the Italian University Departments of Classics which have invited the author to expound his theory: Vinci held a series of lectures at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” within the course of geography whose title was “The travel and the myth”. As one can easily understand, the approach needs to be interdisciplinary and all scholars ought to offer their expertise in order to scientifically test such hypothesis. The final aim is to highlight those aspects of the European Bronze Age which can provide a meaningful contribution to identify the origins of European culture and to detect with more precision the contacts between the different areas of Europe at that time. This proves to be a propitious occasion for European scholars to compare their data available so far and, maybe, to draw some shared conclusions. Starting from the available data, the project aims to collect them systematically and to further investigate the Bronze Age in Northern Europe by highlighting the possible cultural links such as the transfer of knowledge and technologies at that time. We know that commercial exchanges took place along precise ways such as the well known trade of Baltic amber developed on the River Vistula’s course, and it would be interesting to understand what were the other aspects of material and non-material cultures involved. The research project would involve: 1) the study of metals, the technology employed to work them and their places of origin 2) a deeper study of European literature and history in order to identify the cultural setting of the Homeric texts 3) the archaeological excavation of Baltic and North-Atlantic cairns. The areas which are particularly interesting are the Salo area in Finland and the Kleppe area in Norway