Seafaring Nation



Boat pendant

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17th-18th century pendant, complete with sailors... it is about 2-3 inches tall.

Today I spent some time thinking about the impact on modern Greek culture of Greece's location.  We in the west think of it as our ancestral home:  the root of western culture, so it is surely European.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, my travellers had the idea that the "eastern influences" were the result of Ottoman rule and would quickly disappear once Greece was released from its bondage, and the glory of the ancient Greeks would soon return.  Greece WAS Europe and could be again.  The "eastern" influences were always a surprise and disappointment to western eyes.  But Greece never has been just Europe, that side of it is just what we've been interested in.  It has always been a crossroads.  I can't even say it has one foot in the east and one in the west, as I think Greece has more feet than that:  a third foot in Africa (all the lions from Mycenean times onward) and a fourth in the Balkans and maybe even a 5th is in Russia...  This study with the students of Greece in both ancient and modern times makes it blindingly obvious that one of the strengths of Greece is that it has always had strong contacts in three continents.  It isn't just its location between them all, but also its maritime focus necessitated by the island chains and its length of coastline.  

Early 20th century folk art plate.

It doesn't just have contacts, it has shared culture with all those contacts, so elements of food, of music, of government, of outlook, of worldview are shared with all those other cultures.  There are opportunities for business in all directions.  I saw one of the ubiquitous language skills in my neighborhood advertising French, German, English and Romanian as options.  It is never just language, it is culture as well, and perspective or worldview.  I try to imagine speaking a language that is used in only one smallish country, and being required for survival to learn a second and maybe even a third language from my first years in school.  Yesterday, at the playground, a group of children, the oldest of whom couldn't have been more than 7 years old, noticed that Ellie didn't speak Greek, so tried French (there is a French immersion school nearby) and finally English to commicate.  They were able to recognize the silence of a mono-lingual child and select from an array of choices in which to communicate.  And again, it is never just language.  It is outlook and worldview.  Both their location AND their unique language push them outwards towards understanding other cultures, and not just one, but many. 

An archaic sphinx, borrowed from Egypt.

Just this last 10 days in all the sites and museums that looked at both ancient and modern Greece has highlighted the Turkish influences on the early 20th century pottery styles, the ancient African lions at Mycene and Delos, the Orthodox (Byzantine) art and religious paraphenalia that is similar to that in Serbia and Russia, the Indian influence of the tiger on the mosaic on ancient Delos...Crepes in Greece (the latest craze) isn't "un-Greek" as I'd been thinking, but perhaps "ur-Greek" instead.