In the enchanted isles
The Aeolian Islands dot the northern shore of Sicily. Karen Sparnon goes in search of myth and folklore.
“Auguri, signora, signore, auguri.”
At Reggio di Calabria an armless beggar got onto the train. His plaintive cry entered the carriage before he did. The two Sicilian women in our travelling compartment each made the sign of the cross and stuffed some money into his pockets. It didn’t matter that one was a lawyer and the other a biochemist.
On Sicily and her islands we were to discover that religion, folklore and myth are all part of the landscape. It was an auspicious beginning as we were on a pilgrimage. We, too, were part of this other-worldliness.
We were headed for the Aeolian archipelago, a small group of seven islands dotting the northern shores of Sicily. Our search centred on a tiny, stone house on Salina, known as the greenest of the islands.
Reggio di Calabria is a working city, and from here the ferries to Sicily cross the narrow neck of the Straits of Messina at astonishingly regular intervals. Their destination is Messina, a beautiful, frantic city perched on the narrow pinnacle where Sicily kisses the toe of Italy’s boot. At Reggio di Calabria the train was pulled apart and the individual carriages were shunted onto the ferry. The whole process took more than an hour, most of which was spent in the dark.
The sensation of leaving well-trodden ground intensified when we found ourselves sitting in a deconstructed carriage in the bottom of a ferry, listening to the swish and echo of the sea.
At Messina we didn’t wait for the train to be reassembled; we walked from the ferry terminus to the station entrance, which were in close proximity, wondering how to locate the car-hire depot.
As turned out to be the case in Sicily, the unexpected happened and the single employee of the depot, a dark-headed fidgeting Sicilian, was waiting for us at the station.
We were swept into a car and tore at an impossible speed through the clogged streets of Messina. It was Friday and Messina was engaged in frenzied anticipation of the weekend.
By the time we arrived at the depot the rain was pelting down, and our friend heaved our cases from car to car with little thought as to either cases or car. Papers to be signed flashed about and frequent phone calls bemoaning his belatedness were made to what turned out later to be a young woman. We were obviously in the middle of a hot date, which explained his extraordinarily prompt attention.
We had rented a villa in the seaside town of Gioiosa Marea, about half way along the north coast of Sicily. Milazzo, the port from which the ferries leave for the islands, is less than a 45-minutes drive away.
The agency had given us a map that read like a cryptic crossword clue and told us to turn left at the river. What river, and how on earth do you get off the autostrada?
We spent much of the hour-long trip on the mobile phone and it was midnight when our charming landlord, his wife and their huge dog rescued us from the main street of town.
A circuitous route, which, incidentally, did not seem to contain any rivers, saw us in rural Sicily. The fire was alight, there was homemade wine and a bowl of olives on the table and, in the morning, the view from our window was superb. The villa nestled in a gully where goats grazed outside our door among the gnarled olive trees and, all around us, the steep sides of the mountains rolled down to the Sicilian shores. It was entrancing.
Gioiosa Marea is no small town by Australian standards, but it seems small. It is full of tiny shops and has its own miniature seaside esplanade.
There was a shrine to Saint Francis guarding the rutted track to our villa, a church less than 50 metres away, and a little hunting through the dictionary informed us that Gioiosa Marea translates as Joyful Mary. Altogether, it was the perfect setting for any pilgrimage.
Travelling to the islands can be a hit and miss affair. The departure and return times of the hydrofoil vary considerably throughout the seasons, and it is wise to check in advance at one of the tiny offices scattered along Milazzo’s foreshore.
On one of our island forays we encountered a considerable delay while, in true gregarious Sicilian fashion, numerous divers inspected the nether parts of our ferry. Despite being interesting, this did not engender confidence. Eventually, all was to their satisfaction and we slipped into the Tyrrhenian Sea in search of Salina.
On the remote Aeolian Islands it is very easy to let the ordinary world slip away and to see everything through a layer of myth and legend. Everything seems to have its own story, most of which have roots far in the past.
The Aeolian Islands are named after Aeolus, the god of the winds, and their names read like a musical score: Vulcano, Lipari, Salina, Panarea, Stromboli, Filicudi and Alicudi.
Stromboli lies directly north of Milazzo, with Salina to the north-west forming the apex of a triangle. In between Stromboli and Salina lies Panarea and in a straight line from Milazzo to Salina, the traveller comes first to Vulcano and then to Lipari. Moving further westward are the islands of Filicudi and Alicudi which form a sort of tail off the coast of Salina.
The locals say the islands are still evolving. They are fond of the story that, in 1955, a small island emerged in the sea near volanic Stromboli and then promptly sank.
To my mind this rather miraculous appearance and disappearance fits well with the sense that somehow these islands are lost in time. They are an Italian Brigadoon and, like that mythical Scottish town that slips in and out of the mists, they wield an uncanny power.
We stopped at Vulcano, once feared for its somewhat unpredictable rumblings, but now the destination of many European holiday seekers who come for the mud baths.
Vulcano was at one point owned by an Englishman who fled after an eruption in 1888 blew out a plug of fused magmatic material. For decades after, island life revolved around farming and sheep rearing, black grapes, capers and fishing.
In 1949, Dieterle made his film, Vulcano, with the actress Anna Magnani, and attention was again focussed on this wild island. At the same tine, coincidentally, on the island of Stromboli, Rossellini began filming Stromboli, with Ingrid Bergman. It is said that competition between the Italian Magnani and the Nordic Bergman was intense!
The sheer cliff faces and the continuous smell of sulphur in the air - caused by the venting of steam, sulphur and carbon dioxide at high temperature - are suggestive of pent-up energy. Vulcano was named after the Roman god of fire and is the legendary home of the forge of the gods.
Its alum and sulphur have been extracted for centuries. Caves dug into the tuff are thought to be tombs built so that people could be buried near the god. At Vulcano, a man boarded with his accordion and serenaded us to the next island, Lipari. It didn’t matter that his playing jerked along with an eccentric rhythm and his singing was somewhat short of mediocre. In this ferry in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, Pavarotti himself could hardly have sounded better.
At Lipari parcels and boxes were heaved about and much discussion surrounded a particularly swish motorscooter. For the whole of our journey any slight movement of this bike would bring at least three locals rushing to its assistance. Lipari is the largest and most heavily populated of the islands. The ferries arrive at Marina Lunga, and above the town are the imposing walls of the natural fortress of Castle Rock, the ancient Greek acropolis, continuously inhabited for six thousand years.
Lipari thrives because of its tourist trade, with pumice deposits coming a close second. The statue of San Bartolo, patron of Lipari, watches over all who enter the island. Churches to visit include 16th century San Bartolomeo, with its silver statue of the saint where, once inside, it is possible to visit the cloister of the original Norman Abbey.
Only four kilometres separates Lipari from Salina and it was just before lunch when we arrived at Santa Marina. At the turn of the century, more than half the population of 9000 people had emigrated from here to Australia, America, Argentina and Venezuela. This pattern had been repeated over all the islands in the Aeolian archipelago.
One of the primary causes had been an outbreak of phyloxera amongst the vines, which had decimated the islands’ economy and scattered their people.
Salina is a living island with three main towns: Santa Marina, Malfa and Leni. The people still tend their vines and live in old, stone houses on the hillsides.
Our destination was Malfa, and we boarded the blue bus, which careered along the hairpin bends that traced the jagged coastline.
Armed with an old photograph and a guide recruited by our interested bus driver, we wandered Malfa in search of a particular house. Our guide was a local and found the approximate location easily enough but the perspective was wrong. We tried to explain, but the notion was too abstract for our limited knowledge of the Italian language.
Left alone, we searched until we had in front of us an exact replica of our photograph. It was a timeless, white stone house. Part of the roof had crumbled and washing was strung along the front porch. It was surrounded by vines and vegetables. We ate lunch in the shadow of my partner’s mother’s birthplace. She, too, had been part of the mass emigration of the early part of the century.
We located the church where a distant relative acts as housekeeper. In Italy any family connection evokes near hysteria and, language difficulties notwithstanding, we were bundled into a car and taken on a tour of the island. It was a maniacal ride, made more so by the cups of inky expresso downed just before leaving. Graziella maneuvered the bends at top speed, stopping every so often to tell us of some other wonder. We looked over Pollara where Massimo Troisi filmed Il Postino, and Graziella showed us the house inhabited by the poet Pablo Neruda in the film.
We admired the twin peaks of the two volcanoes, Monte Fossa delle Felci and Monte Rivi, in the centre of which lies the Valdichiesa – valley of the church – in which stands the beautiful sanctuary of the Madonna del Terzito. The views from the sanctuary over the great expanse of blue sea are sublime and there is a peace seldom felt in any of the busier tourist destinations. The history of the sanctuary reaches back to the fifth century.
From Salina it is possible to see the islands of Filicudi and Alicudi. Both these islands are off the shipping routes and only just beginning to attract tourists. With largely untouched prehistoric ruins, hillsides of white cubic houses, and unspoiled natural resources, they are a delight.
The locals say that some families can trace their ancestry back to the Roman Empire. Nearly all of the Aeolian islands possess a valley with a church, and some ancient Greek or Roman ruins abandoned in remote and beautiful places.
Standing in these places one is aware that these islands have a history that reaches back to a past where reality and myth eventually become indistinguishable.
It is said locally that Atlantis disappeared into the sea following volcanic explosions in the Aeolian Islands. They say it lies in the triangle between Lipari, Salina and Panarea.
Ulysses is said to have passed through these islands on his way to Ithaca, and Circe, the vestal virgin with her prophetic powers, is supposed to have resided at Filicudi.
On the return journey to Santa Marina, along the winding coastal road, our bus driver played classical music at full volume. Both Stromboli and Panarea could be seen in the distance.
Panarea is the smallest island and is said to be the floating island of the Odyssey. On the bus our only travelling companion was a retired schoolteacher with little English. He told us that Panarea was like a “dream”. He had a far away look in his eyes when he told us that this is paradise.
But enchantment does not last forever and even pilgrimages come to an end. The sun was setting when we arrived at Santa Marina di Salina and watched the hydrofoil glide slowly into view. It was a perfect sunset, the kind that comes after a perfect day and anticipates a perfect tomorrow.
Published in The Age, Saturday 4 December,1999
©️KarenSparnon/In the enchanted isles/2025