Episteme 2

Page 28

28

Therefore, here is the "secret" which has been hidden inside Homer's poems up to now and explains all oddities of Homeric geography: the Trojan War and other events handed down by Greek mythology were not set in the Mediterranean, but in the Baltic area, i.e. the primitive home of the blond "long-haired" Achaeans. On this subject, the distinguished Swedish scholar, Professor Martin P. Nilsson, in his works (Homer and Mycenae and The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion) reports a series of pieces of archaeological evidence uncovered in the Mycenaean sites in Greece, supporting the fact that the Achaean population came from the North. Some examples are: the existence of a large quantity of baltic amber in the most ancient Mycenaean tombs in Greece (which is not to be ascribed to trade, because the amber is very scarce in later graves as well as in the coeval Minoan tombs in Crete); the typically Nordic features of their architecture (the Mycenaean megaron "is identical to the hall of the ancient Scandinavian Kings"); the "striking similarity" of two stone slabs found in a tomb in Dendra "with the menhirs known from the Bronze Age of Central Europe"; the Nordic-type skulls found in the necropolis of Kalkani, etc. A remarkable affinity between Aegean art and some Scandinavian remains dating back to the Bronze Age has also been noted, with particular regard to the figures engraved on Kivik's tomb in Sweden, to the point that a scholar in the nineteenth century suggested that this monument was built by the Phoenicians! Another sign of the Achaean presence in the Nordic world in a very distant past is a Mycenaean graffito found in the megalithic complex of Stonehenge in Southern England. Other remains revealing the Mycenaean influence were found in the same area ("Wessex culture"), which date back to a period preceding the Mycenaean civilisation in Greece. A trace of this sort of contact can be found also in the Odyssey, which mentions a bronze market placed overseas, in a foreign country, named "Temese", never found in the Mediterranean area. Since bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, which in the North is only found in Cornwall, it's very likely that the mysterious Temese corresponds to the Thames, named "Tamesis" or "Tamensim" in ancient times. So, following the Odyssey, we learn that, during the Bronze Age, the ancient Scandinavians used to sail to Temese/Thames - "placed overseas, in a foreign country" (Od. I, 183-184) - to supply themselves with bronze. And what about Odysseus's trips, after the Trojan War? When he is about to reach Ithaca, a storm takes him away from his world; so he has many adventures in fabulous localities until he reaches Ogygia, that's Faroe. They are located out of the Baltic, in the North Atlantic (he also meets the


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