The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales: The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Migration of Myth (Paperback)

by Felice Vinci (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Powerful, methodical, important, and convincing."
(Alfred de Grazia, author of Burning of Troy )

“It is hard to overstate the impact, both scholarly and imaginative, of Vinci’s compellingly argued thesis. . . . Scholars will be rethinking Indo-European studies from the ground up and readers of Homer’s epics will enter fresh realms of delight as they look anew at the world in which Homer’s heroes first breathed and moved.”
(Professor William Mullen, department of classics, Bard College )

". . .Vinci engages in intriguing, fascinating, but also well-substantiated speculation on the bases of Homer's works. . . . this work covers many little-known but interesting and colorful aspects of the ancient European world and also enhances appreciation of the literary style and the cultural material and sources of the works."
( Henry Berry, Midwest Book Review, May 2006  )

". . . blends history and classical studies with geographical analysis and spiritual insights as it provides evidence linking Homer's tales to northern European, not Mediterranean, origins. From how heroic memories were preserved and locales changed to the origins of civilization itself. . . ."
(Diane Donovan, California Bookwatch, June 2006 )

"Vinci's audacious rewriting of Homeric culture and mythology is a creative proposition, which deserves to be further investigated. He has my full vote of confidence."
(Georg Feuerstein, Traditional Yoga Studies, Oct 2006 )

"The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales is a rare example of a book that turns received notions upside-down."
(Joscelyn Godwin, translator of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili )

Product Description
Compelling evidence that the events of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey took place in the Baltic and not the Mediterranean

• Reveals how a climate change forced the migration of a people and their myth to ancient Greece

• Identifies the true geographic sites of Troy and Ithaca in the Baltic Sea and Calypso's Isle in the North Atlantic Ocean

For years scholars have debated the incongruities in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, given that his descriptions are at odds with the geography of the areas he purportedly describes. Inspired by Plutarch's remark that Calypso's Isle was only five days sailing from Britain, Felice Vinci convincingly argues that Homer's epic tales originated not in the Mediterranean, but in the northern Baltic Sea.

Using meticulous geographical analysis, Vinci shows that many Homeric places, such as Troy and Ithaca, can still be identified in the geographic landscape of the Baltic. He explains how the dense, foggy weather described by Ulysses befits northern not Mediterranean climes, and how battles lasting through the night would easily have been possible in the long days of the Baltic summer. Vinci's meteorological analysis reveals how a decline of the "climatic optimum" caused the blond seafarers to migrate south to warmer climates, where they rebuilt their original world in the Mediterranean. Through many generations the memory of the heroic age and the feats performed by their ancestors in their lost homeland was preserved and handed down to the following ages, only later to be codified by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Felice Vinci offers a key to open many doors that allow us to consider the age-old question of the Indo-European diaspora and the origin of the Greek civilization from a new perspective.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Inner Traditions; Tra edition (December 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594770522
• ISBN-13: 978-1594770524
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #455,050 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars All Roads Lead to Scandinavia, April 25, 2006

By	Scout (VA USA) - See all my reviews

Felice Vinci traces the Greek epic tales of Homer to an original Baltic setting. Scholars have long troubled over the misfit of geographical information that the Iliad and Odyssey relate. Vinci makes a strong case that the Mycenaeans came from a then much warmer Scandinavia and migrated south to the Aegean, taking their epic stories with them. Correlating place names between those in the epics with those in the Baltic and North Sea regions, he pinpoints the locations of every major city, including Troy. Further strengthening his case, he demonstrates the cultural parallels between these mythic tales and others from Scandinavian culture.

His thesis is not as far fetched as this reviewer intially assumed it would be. We can see many places along the east coast of the United States named in honor of cities and towns in England, as namesakes of the original homes of the newcomers to the New World. If Vinci is right, inhabitants from northern Europe migrated south to the Mediterranean area and renamed numerous places in honor of their former homeland as well. Readers of Homer's stories assumed that they described events in this new homeland rather than their possible real places of origin. Many scholars considered these stories to be myths because they fail to fit the Near East setting, when they in fact fit much better in the far north and may represent real events after all. It would be like someone assuming that stories about the English Wars of the Roses occurred along the Atlantic seaboard of North America, where the interrelationship all the places named would be a jumbled mess, when in reality they took place in England, where all the geography actually fits.

Toward the end, Vinci mars his fine research with extrapolated speculation in an effort to suggest that Sumer, the early Hebrew patriarchs and everyone one else from the Middle East started in Scandinavia. This diminishes the legitimacy of his main theory. Had he left out such claims, his case would be stronger.

Vinci himself allows that his ideas rest upon cultural and geographic evidence and need archaeological research to confirm them. His argument is so strong, though, that it alone should be justification to explore physically the places that he identifies as the actual locations of the events of Homer's tales.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating solution to the Homeric enigmas., June 28, 2006

By	Paul Kuhlmann (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For those who have actually read and pondered the Homeric sagas, many difficulties present themselves in trying to visualize the battles, the geography and the scenery when compared to the eastern areas of the Mediterranean Sea. In this book, Felice Vinci proposes and very well defends the seemingly outrageous idea that the events described in the epics actually transpired in the Baltic Sea. He contends that these events took place at the end of a particularly warm period, and with the dropping temperatures, the actors of the Homeric dramas fled south and occupied the warmer Mediterranean. Transposing the names of their former cities to their new homes, once things settled down, the epics were put to writing.

This is a bold and exciting assertion. This book explains and defends the premise very well. I strongly encourage people to read and ponder. It is a rare thing when something this bold and of this scope can be conceived and propounded with such dignity and vigor.

Put down whatever you are reading today and get this book!

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He has my full vote of confidence., October 14, 2006

By	Georg Feuerstein - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It is a curious fact that the geographical descriptions furnished in Homer's Iliad (the story of the siege of Troy) and Odyssey (the story of Odysseus's journey home after Troy's fall) do not easily match the assumed Mediterranean topography. Various prehistorians, historians, archeologists, and linguists have expressed their consternation about Homer's geographical details. It was Plutarch (46-120 A.D.), who in his essay "The face that appears in the lunar orb," unequivocally states that Goddess Calypso's island of Ogygia mentioned in the Odyssey was situated "five days' sail from Britain, toward the west."

Vinci, a nuclear engineer by profession and a passionate classicist by vocation, took Plutarch's statement as a serious clue to search for the geography of the Homeric epics in the North Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean. He has amassed a mountain of evidence in favor of the Baltic origins of both Greek epics. Similarities between the mythologies of the North and the Mediterranean have often been pointed out. Vinci argues that a deterioration in climate around 2000 B.C. caused some of the Scandinavian peoples to migrate south. As time went by, the epics were claimed by the Greeks for their own Mediterranean culture and environment.

What about Schliemann's Troy? Although this intrepid explorer undoubtedly discovered the Mycenean civilization, his claim to have unearthed the city of Troy has never been universally accepted. Already Strabo ( ) denied that the "ancient Ilium ( Troy)" was to be found in Anatolia. A better candidate for the Homeric Troy than the Anatolian town of Hisarlik, excavated by Schliemann, is possibly the Finnish town of Toija, as suggested by Vinci.

Vinci's audacious rewriting of Homeric culture and mythology is a creative proposition, which deserves to be further investigated. He has my full vote of confidence.

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