I’ve recently received an update from Felice Vinci, that I have been allowed to publish here. It’s about the magical Lake Sommen in Sweden that is steeped in legends since times immemorial.
To understand his analysis, one has to understand the importance of the Catalog of ships in Homer’s Iliad.
The Catalog of ships is the second chapter of Homer’s Iliad and has been fundamental for Felice Vinci’s analysis of where different peoples mentioned in the Iliad came from.
In the Catalog of ships, all the participating chieftains and their peoples are recounted.
By analyzing different parts of the Iliad, Felice Vinci could draw the conclusion that when place names, or people, or other things, are recounted they are generally recounted counter-clockwise. Having previously concluded that the story told in the Iliad must have taken place in the area around the Baltic Sea (based on geographic, topographic and climatic analyses among others), the next step was to find out more exactly where the chieftains and their peoples lived.
This analysis helped Felice Vinci to conclude that the island Euboea was the island Öland in the Baltic.
Enjoy!
Homer Lake Sommen by Felice Vinci
The Catalog of ships of the Iliad mentions the contingent of Locrians, “who live in front of the sacred Euboea” (Il. II, 535). Here Homer gives a precise geographical reference, the island of Euboea (on which the Catalog moves immediately after Locris) and, indeed, here the Swedish coast overlooks the island of Öland. Öland is the perfect geographical correspondent of Greek Euboea: like the latter it has an elongated shape, is extended in length a little less than its Aegean counterpart and follows the profile of the mainland in front.
Among the cities of the Locrians there were “Kalliarus (…) and the beautiful Augeae” (II, 531-532), which could correspond to the current Hallarum and Augerum. In addition, two other towns of the Locrians, “Tarphe and Tronios on the banks of the Boagrios” (Il. II, 533), correspond to the current Torpa and Tranås, both located in the Swedish hinterland on Lake Sommen, a few kilometers from each other, in the Småland region (which actually faces Öland, Homeric Euboea).
Lake Sommen is linked to an ancient legend: it was created by a cow called Urkon or Sommakoa, who in a fit of anger dug it with its hooves, then fled from the cave where in the meantime the magician Somme had locked it up1 (called Urkons Cave in Swedish language) and killed King Frode2. Now the cow rests in his cave on an ox skin: every Christmas he eats a hair, and when he has eaten them all he will come out of there and there will be the end of the world.
Now, remembering that Frodhi (of which Frode is a variant) was a mythical king linked to the magical mill called Grótti and at the end of an era, we understand that here we are dealing with an ancient cosmic myth, in which behind the metaphor of cow hides the constellation of Taurus: when, following the precession of the equinoxes, the age of Taurus would have ended, this would have inevitably given rise to a cosmic catastrophe.
So this myth probably dates back to the Neolithic, when, when the constellation of Taurus rose at the spring equinox, there was a civilization that built large megalithic monuments (and perhaps knew the precession of the equinoxes). But all this also tells us that the Grótti mill represents the universe, or the “cave” (the same term in Swedish and Italian (“grotta”), derived from the Greek kryptē) with its slow passage of time, represented by the “hairs”, i.e. the years that the cow eats one at a time every Christmas, that is, at the beginning of each new year.
On the other hand, that Lake Sommen has something to do with the passage of time is confirmed by another local legend, according to which it has 365 islands, one for each day of the year (actually 260)3.
Here we focused on the legend of the Sommen cow – where we found the two localities of Torpa and Tranås, corresponding to the two cities of the Locrians, Tarphe and Tronios on the Boagrios – because Boagrios means “cow” or “ox” (bous) “wild” (agrios)! Moreover, agrios can be compared to Urkon, one of the names of this terrible cow.
In short, the geographical correlation of the Homeric Tarphe and Tronios on the Boagrios with the Swedish localities of Torpa and Tranås on Lake Sommen (in the Locrian region facing Euboea-Öland), corroborated by the relationship between the meaning of Boagrios and the ancient legend of the “wild cow” of the Sommen, represents further proof of the original Nordic dimension of the two poems (at the time of which the age of the Bull was over, replaced by Aries).
We also note the relationship between the names of the Sommen, the cow Sommakoa and the magician Somme, who neutralized it by closing it in the cave: the Swedish term sömn means “sleep” (somnium in Latin, sonno in Italian), which is well suited to the sense of the legend, and that Sommakoa could be the “sleeping cow” (ko in Swedish means “cow”), asleep in her cave waiting to wake up at the end of time.
1. https://www.hembygd.se/norra-vi-hembygdsf-rening/plats/226296/text/37519
Ilion & HERACLES: the books 