Mollicone: “Homer copied the Norse epic. Read Felice Vinci’s book”

Federico Mollicone of Fratelli d’Italia applauds the Odyssean-Foglian initiative. “Congratulations on the idea of publishing a book a day,” he writes to us via WhatsApp. Thank you. He then draws our attention to a text – a truly interesting one, in fact – which reopens – no less – the Homeric question. The chairman of the Chamber of Deputies’ Culture Committee was won over, years ago, by the nuclear engineer Felice Vinci. He was captivated by his "Homer in the Baltic" – so he says – even more so than "Odysseus and Circe". "That book is phenomenal," Mollicone tells "Il Foglio". “The entire Homeric myth is nothing more than a Mediterranean adaptation of the Norse myths of the Bronze Age.” Really? The theory is fascinating but perhaps a bit bold. “At the University of Riga, they’ve set up a course for us because the theory is sound. With topographical, etymological, philological, anthropological and lexical evidence.” Did the Greeks copy the Balts? “The misty sea… The furs… Excuse me, but where is the misty sea in the Mediterranean? And where are the furs?” Who knows. When it comes to Homer – not to mention Nolan – we almost prefer Pyrrho and suspend judgement. But in the meantime, who is Felice Vinci? And what does Odysseus have to do with Scandinavia, the Danish islands, and the murky, icy waters of north-eastern Europe? Let’s ring the nuclear engineer and independent researcher who, in 1995, published our MP’s bedside reading. At the time, Vinci enjoyed a certain degree of success; his book was published in nine languages with a foreword – as Mollicone recalls – by Rosa Calzecchi Onesti.

But how did such a theory come about? “I wrote “Homer in the Baltic”,” says Vinci, “when, confined to my home by Chernobyl, I reread the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”.” It was the spring of 1986. “That’s when I realised there were so many inconsistencies.” Can you give us some examples? “I realised, for example, that the Ithacan archipelago described in the poems was completely different from the Ionian Ithaca. In fact, if we go by Homer’s descriptions, there is only one place in the world with that configuration, and that is in Denmark.” So? “So Ithaca is the Danish island of Lyø, south of Funen.” But in your book there are plenty of examples like this. Another one? “Well, I’m thinking of Telemachus’s journey from Pylos to Sparta. A crossing that Odysseus’s son completes with ease, but which would involve crossing the Taygetus mountain range, which is two thousand metres high. To put it another way, a journey like the one from Rome to Pescara via the Gran Sasso or the Maiella mountains – yet Telemachus completes it very quickly because, in the Danish archipelago, there is a flat island that corresponds to the Peloponnese.”

Let’s recap Mr Mollicone’s question: “Where are the furs, in the Mediterranean? And the misty sea?”. “Eh… Good question. The Homeric heroes, depicted naked on Attic vases, actually fought wrapped in wool, like Nestor with his sheepskin turned inside out. As for the sea – wine-coloured when stormy or white-haired when calm – it corresponds to the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic. But you see, the Odyssey is full of geographical contradictions that are all consistent with one another.” Help us make sense of it all. “It’s simple. The Trojan War was fought before the Homeric Achaeans arrived in Greece from northern Europe. When they founded Mycenae in the Mediterranean in 1600 BC, they wrote their songs, realising that the Aegean basin resembled the Baltic Sea. In this way, they reconstructed their lost world.” A lost world, but evidently well preserved on the shelves of Colle Oppio. And now unearthed by the ruling right-wing government. “Many scholars,” notes Mollicone, “have identified traces, around the Castelli, dating back to pre-Roman populations: cinerary urns with solar symbols very similar to Baltic urns and symbols.” Further evidence of a Homer who sang of Ithaca and Lyø… Of a strange (but real?) Homer who might well appeal to the Mediterranean Meloni and the Baltic Frederiksen. Clues to a pro-European epic? Perhaps, who knows.