Archipelagos and Islands at the Mirror: SEA-ONES (FAROE and MYKINES, Denmark), LAND-ONES (CARNIA and SAURIS, Italy) (en Inglés)
Reseña del libro "Archipelagos and Islands at the Mirror: SEA-ONES (FAROE and MYKINES, Denmark), LAND-ONES (CARNIA and SAURIS, Italy) (en Inglés)"
The Danish Academy in Rome years ago suggested the idea to compare, from an historical, political, ethnical, geographical and economical point of view, the far away situation of the Northern Atlantic Faroe Islands, where I carried out a socio-cultural survey, with a comparable Italian situation. That proposal was really very interesting and stimulating. So much that it could be transformed, then, in an international seminar, today in this book... After, naturally, having extensively revised, updated and integrated that work. Also by adding 105 colour & b.w. images and 90 footnotes. As anthropologists, we are well prepared to compare cultural realities belonging to more or less distant societies of the world. So, I had the wonderful and amazing opportunity to introduce the situation of Carnia, a small region of the Alps, in North-Eastern Italy. The task to compare these two worlds worked in that occasion very well. Easily I went through things, situations, "valley and sea islands", histories and stories. So, at the end I could properly speak of Two Archipelagos and Two Islands at the mirror: Sea-ones (Faroe and Mykines), Land-ones (Carnia and Sauris). To better compare both realities, I had singled out some useful indicators: isolation; transport and communication difficulties; presence and persistence in the centuries of their own languages; poverty and past deprivation; emigrations; same demographic consistency; great communities crisis of yesterday; importance and vitality of their specific cultural traditions; economies connected to the habitat; strong relation man-environment; persistence of a rich spontaneous architectural apparatus; strong community identities; administrative autonomies; farming; climatic similarities (heavy rainfalls); tendency towards the growing up of a sort of selected tourism; strong presence of oral tradition and of "evening fire tales", as ways to transmit cultural elements and folk-lore to the incoming new generations. The book has the following basic structure: a) an historical, geo-climatically, administrative, ethno-anthropological and linguistic introduction to both Faroe Islands and Carnia; b) the singling-out of the ethno-cultural identities of the two communities: Faroe, a small community-nation; Carnia, a strong regional identity. c) the two communities amid tradition and change: - the Faroe: the bygd and the traditional self-sufficient community economy (fishing, farming, cultivation, fowling, grindadrap). The changing economy connected to: 1) the sea: deep fishing, ship-building; 2) tending towards the new frontiers of tourism; - Carnia: a modern post-industrial economy, which keeps still strong ties with the mountain habitat (wood industry and handicraft, farming, cultivations), but is tending towards a stronger touristic development; d) the Great Faroe Crisis of the 1990s and emigration. Carnia, land of centuries old temporary and permanent emigration (till the 1960s and 1970s); e) two case studies in comparison: the isolated communities of Mykines (Faroe) and Sauris (Carnia). Isolation has strongly affected both the communities of the sea-island of Mykines and of the land-island of the valley of Sauris. Both places are heavily menaced by strong depopulation. Both are looking for a new chance to survive in a future selected tourism. Both are still experiencing a strong relation man-environment based upon respect. Both their peoples may tell outsiders their long, dramatic, life histories. Made of hardship for islanders and for somari ("donkeys") - the Sauris men -. Both have experienced weeks, sometimes months, or no contact at all with the outside world. Sauris it is, not only an "island" and highland within the archipelago Carnia. As a matter of fact it represents also an ethno-cultural and linguistic separateness from any other parts of Carnia. Because it is a German-speaking community, founded in the XIII century by Bavarian farmers.
