Homer in the Baltic
Already scholars of antiquity had noted that Homeric geography had huge inconsistencies with the reality of the Greco-Mediterranean world. But Homeric geography has also been a cause for perplexity in much more recent times, when the decipherment of Mycenaean writing, the so-called "Linear B," graffitied on tablets from Knossos, Pylos and at Mycenae, made it possible to compare the world of which they were an expression with the reality described in the two poems. What emerged was, as Prof. Moses Finley notes
"the complete lack of contact between Mycenaean geography as we now know it from the tablets and archaeology, on the one hand, and the Homeric accounts on the other."
This is matched by archaeological evidence in favor of the possibility that the Mycenaean civilization had a Nordic origin: in this regard, Prof. Martin P. Nilsson enumerates several significant clues, such as the presence, in the oldest Mycenaean tombs, of large quantities of Baltic amber (which, on the other hand, is scarce both in the most recent burials and in the Minoan tombs in Crete), the distinctly Nordic imprint of their architecture (the Mycenaean "megaron" "is identical to the hall of the ancient Scandinavian kings") the "striking resemblance" of some stone slabs from a Dendra tomb "to known menhirs from the Bronze Age of Central Europe," the Nordic-type skulls found in the Kalkani necropolis, and so on. On the other hand, archaeologists such as Geoffrey Bibby and philosophers such as Bertrand Russell consider it probable that Mycenaean civilization originated from "blond Nordic invaders who brought the Greek language with them" (Russell).
In turn, Prof. Klavs Randsborg points out that certain finds from Scandinavian archaeology, and in particular the figures engraved on the slabs of the mound at Kivik, in southern Sweden, show remarkable affinities with the models of Aegean art, to the point that some scholars of the past have speculated that the monument was the work of the Phoenicians. And another significant clue to the presence of the Achaeans in northern Europe, around the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C., is a Mycenaean-type graffito found in the megalithic complex at Stonehenge, in southern England, along with other traces, also found by archaeologists in the same area ("Wessex culture"), from a period probably preceding the beginning of Mycenaean civilization in Greece.
In short, the studies carried out on the Mycenaean civilization and its origins, as they emerge from archaeology and the deciphering of the texts given on the tablets, far from clarifying its relations with the two poems, have brought out a complex picture, in which the divergences, not only geographical, between the Mycenaean and the Homeric worlds coexist, the correspondences of the latter with Bronze Age barbarian Europe (strongly emphasized by Prof. Stuart Piggott, the great British academic and archaeologist) and a number of clues to the Mycenaeans' Nordic origin, which are matched by the striking similarities between Nordic and Mediterranean finds from the same period.
At this point, one way to "balance the books" might be to introduce an additional piece: the verification of the possible coincidence of Homeric geography, so problematic with respect to the Mediterranean context, with that Nordic world from which the Mycenaeans might have descended when they settled in Greece. This is a perspective that, while it is a logical consequence of the framework outlined above, could allow all the scattered pieces of the puzzle to find a logical place in a finally clear and coherent overview.
A first clue in favor of this hypothesis is found in the meteorology of the two poems: in the world sung by Homer indeed the harshness typical of northern climates is felt. A "thick fog" often descends on the combatants on the plain of Troy, and the sea of Odysseus is not the shining sea of the Greek islands, but often appears "livid" and "misty"; everywhere there is a climate that is anything but Mediterranean, with fog, wind, cold, rain, and snow - the latter even on the plain and even on the sea - while sun, and especially heat, are almost absent. In what, according to tradition, is supposed to be a torrid Anatolian lowland, the weather is almost always perturbed, to the point that the fighters, covered in bronze, even go so far as to call for serenity during battle. Moreover, perfectly suited to such a context is the attire of the Homeric characters, tunic and "thick cloak," which they never leave behind, even during banquets: it is precisely reflected in the remains of clothing found in Bronze Age Danish tombs.
In addition, such a perspective also explains the macroscopic anomaly of the great battle that occupies the central books of the Iliad, with two noontimes and an intervening night, during which the fighting is not interrupted by darkness, which is incomprehensible in the Mediterranean world: instead, it may have been the nocturnal glow typical of high latitudes in the days around the summer solstice that caused the fresh troops led by Patroclus, who entered battle just before the waning of a "deadly night," to continue fighting until the next day, without a moment's respite. This key would allow the entire course of the battle to be reconstructed in a perfectly logical and coherent manner, without the perplexities and strains of current interpretations.
And a further clue to the possible northern location of Homeric geography, which also constitutes the key to enter the world of the two poems, is provided to us by the Greek writer Plutarch, who in one of his works, the De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet, makes a startling statement: the island Ogygia, where the goddess Calypso detained Odysseus for a long time before allowing him to return to Ithaca, was located in the North Atlantic, "five days' sail from Britain."
Starting from this indication and following the eastward route, indicated in the fifth book of the Odyssey, taken by Odysseus after his departure from the island (identifiable with one of the Färöer, among which we find a curiously "Greek-sounding" name: Mykines), we are immediately able to locate the land of the Phaeacians, Scheria, on the southern coast of Norway, in an area where Bronze Age finds abound. Not only that: on the one hand, Odysseus in his landing is helped by the reversal of the river current, evidently due to the high tide - a common phenomenon in the Nordic seas, but almost unknown in the Mediterranean - on the other hand, in ancient Norse "skerja" meant "rock."
Next, starting from here, it is possible to locate a small Danish island, called Lyø, which perfectly matches Homeric Ithaca, both in topography and in geographical position in relation to neighboring islands (among which Langeland, the "long island," corresponds to the mysterious Homeric Dulichio, unobtainable in the Mediterranean). In contrast, the Ithaca of the Ionian Sea has nothing to do, either in geographical position or topography, with the homeland of Odysseus, described by Homer in every detail.
At this point, in a well-demarcated area in southern Finland there are numerous place names reminiscent of the names of the Trojans' allies (Askainen, Reso, Karjaa and many others) and a village, Toija, whose territory exactly matches the Homeric description of Troy (while the Anatolian site found by Schliemann at the mouth of the Dardanelles, corresponding to Greco-Roman Troy, gives rise to many reservations, of which even the ancient Greek geographer Strabo was aware). Even, toward the sea is the site of Aijala, corresponding to the "beach," "aigialos" in Greek, where the Achaeans landed and built their fortified camp, while toward the interior the toponyms "Tanttala" and "Sipilä" recall well-known names from Greek mythology. This coincides with the fact that, according to Homer, Aeneas after the Trojan War did not leave for Italy (as Virgil would later claim with the tendentious reconstruction of the Aeneid, aiming to trace the origin of the emperor Augustus' family back to the dynastic line of the Trojan hero), but was the successor of the old king Priam: in short, after the fire and sacking by the Achaeans, the city was rebuilt, as, moreover, is usually the case in such cases. And perhaps from the name of Aeneas, who according to Homer was the progenitor of a long dynasty, derives that of "Aeningia," attested by Pliny, by which the Romans knew southern Finland.
At the same time, the scanning of the Iliad's "Catalogue of Ships" finds a number of extraordinary parallels along the Baltic coast, starting with Sweden, where the Bronze Age flourished in the 2nd millennium B.C., in a much more favorable climatic context than today. It is thus possible to fully reconstruct the world described by Homer (Thebes, Athens, Tiryns, Aulis, Lemno, Samothrace, Chios, Euboea, Crete, Naxos...) - i.e., that of the Northern Bronze Age, which in fact in the second millennium B.C.E. had a great flowering - eliminating all the inconsistencies of the traditional Mediterranean setting, such as the flat "Peloponnese" (which actually corresponds to the large Danish island of Sjaelland) or the night continuation of the longest battle of the Iliad, which can only be explained by the clear night of the high latitudes around the summer solstice. Moreover, the adventures of Odysseus can also be located in such a northern context, which find precise parallels along the coasts and islands of the Norwegian Sea, which is traversed by a branch of the Gulf Stream, the "Ocean River" of mythology.
An entirely new perspective is thus delineated regarding both the setting of the events narrated in the Homeric poems and the origin of Greek civilization itself: the sagas that gave rise to the Iliad and the Odyssey came from the north of Europe; they were brought south by the blond navigators who, in the 16th century B.C, following the collapse of the "climatic optimum," migrated to Greece (presumably coming down the great Russian rivers, such as the Dniepr, as the Vikings, whose civilization has many points of contact with that described by Homer, would do millennia later) and founded the Mycenaean civilization. They then reconstructed in the Mediterranean their original world, in which the events recounted in Greek mythology had taken place.
The latter therefore represents the memory, transmitted through the centuries by the aedi to later civilizations, of the events that in its time had taken place in the lost "Hyperborean" homeland (to which in fact the classical Greeks continued to feel attached, as various Authors attest to us). This also makes it possible to explain the fact, noted by scholars, that the Homeric world appears more primitive than the Mycenaean (while in many respects it is similar to the Viking world, in spite of the temporal gulf between these two civilizations): evidently the contacts that the migratory Achaeans, navigators and traders, after their descent from the north undertook with the refined Mediterranean civilizations favored their rapid evolution.
The Baltic-Scandinavian location of the primitive Achaean world finds confirmation in the collapse of the "climatic optimum" in that area, which occurred around the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C., after a very long period of a climate markedly milder than the present one, which had lasted roughly from 5500 to 2000 B.C.: here, then, is the probable reason that prompted the various Indo-European peoples to move from their original locations. Not surprisingly, their migrations all took place in a period between the 18th and 16th centuries B.C., when the Mycenaeans descended into Greece, the Aryans into India, the Hittites into Anatolia, the Cassiites into Mesopotamia, the Hyksos (who according to recent studies would be Indo-European) into Egypt, the Tocarians into Turkestan, etc. Then again, as early as the late 19th century the learned Indian Brahmin B.G. Tilak had hypothesized the Arctic origin of the ancient Aryans-"cousins" of the Homeric Achaeans as well as speakers of a very related language, similar to present-day Lithuanian-based on the ancient Vedic calendar, which predicted a period of continuous sunshine and one of perennial night, interspersed with "rotating dawns." these are the "dawn dances" of Indian mythology, which Homer also mentions about the island of Circe: indeed, other phenomena also occur here that seem to allude to an extremely northern location, above the Arctic Circle.
This on the other hand can be framed in the new situation introduced into traditional chronology by radiocarbon dating corrected by dendrochronology (the calibration with annual tree rings). In this regard, Prof. Colin Renfrew states that
"a whole series of alarming reversals occur in chronological relationships. The megalithic tombs of Western Europe now become older than the pyramids or circular tombs of Crete, believed to be their antecedents; (...) in England, the final structure of Stonehenge, believed to have been inspired by Mycenaean craftsmen, was completed long before the beginning of Mycenaean civilization."
Finally, an extraordinary, and very recent, archaeological confirmation to the present theory comes to us from the so-called "disc of Nebra" (a village located 50 km west of Leipzig, in eastern Germany) and swords, of Mycenaean type, found at the same site. The disc of Nebra is a bronze artifact dated to 1600 B.C., circular (diameter 32 cm) with reported sun, moon and stars (among which the seven Pleiades stand out). It is the perfect pendant to the verses from the 18th book of the Iliad in which Homer illustrates the astronomical decorations made by the blacksmith god Hephaestus on the bronze layer placed in the center of Achilles' shield:
"There he made the earth, the sky and the sea,the indefatigable sun and the full moon,
and all the signs that crown the sky,
the Pleiades, the Hyades, the power of Orion/ and Ursa...."
The Nebra finds in short show the close relationship, so to speak "triangular," that, through archaeology, can be established between the early Bronze Age Nordic world, the Mycenaean world (the swords) and the Homeric world (the shield).
This, moreover, is perfectly in line with what Prof. Piggott says in his Europa Antica:
"The nobility of [Homer's] hexameters should not mislead us into thinking that the Iliad and Odyssey are anything other than the poems of a largely barbaric Europe of the Bronze Age or early Iron Age. 'There is no Minoan or Asiatic blood in the veins of the Greek muses ... they stand far from the Cretan-Mycenaean world and in contact with European elements of Greek culture and language,' Rhys Carpenter noted; 'behind Mycenaean Greece... lies Europe.'"
