Richard Romanus - Sketches of Skiathos

In ancient Greece, the Gods were thought to refresh themselves in the summer among the pines of Pelion, a mountain range midway between Athens and Thessalonika, where it continues under the north-eastern Aegean Sea and rises again as Skiathos Island, its neighbor, Skopelos, and a series of smaller islands known as the Northern Sporades.

Measuring less than four by six miles north to south, seventy percent of Skiathos Island is a forested mountain range dotted with olive groves, surrounded by seventy bays, inlets and beaches ranging from golden sand sheltered by pines to white polished stones against rugged cliffs accessible only by water.

Called by the same name at least since the ancient geographer Strabo in 34 B.C., the first village was believed to be pre-Hellenic, colonized by the Pelasgians from Thrace who were lured by the shade provided by the huge pines. After the Pelasgians, it was the Mycenaeans who built a village near the port and surrounded it with a large protective wall of marble, which survived until the Middle Ages. It is upon that ancient site that the village of Skiathos currently stands. In 42 B.C., Marc Anthony gave Skiathos to the Athenians after the Battle of Phillipi, as a reward for their friendship, but Athens never protected this small, unimportant island and it soon became a place of exile and a hideout for Saracen pirates and thieves.

In 1204, the Crusaders established their rule over Skiathos and left it to be governed by the Venetians, who built a castle in 1207 as a residence for governors and a citadel for the townspeople, and who retained control of the island with only a few minor interruptions until 1538, when the Turkish pirate, Khayr-ad-din-Barbarossa, Redbeard, captured it after a six-day siege. The island was then handed over to Turkey as a result of a peace treaty with Venice, then was briefly captured by the Venetians, then recaptured by the Ottoman Turks until liberation in 1830, ending a long history of foreign rule with its suffering and deprivation.

The Monastery of Evangelistria, the islands main monastery, was founded in 1794 by an ordained monk named Niphon, from Athos, who wanted to return to the original Orthodox tradition. In 1795, twenty highly educated monks who were aristocrats and philosophers also arrived from Athos. The philosopher monks had a profound influence in Skiathos, especially on native sons such as writers Alexandros Papadiamantis and his cousin Alexandros Moraitidis. In 1828 the first upper school in free Greece was established , and Skiathos became known as The Island of Scholars .

Through centuries of occupation, the Skiathans remained a quiet, sleepy community of struggling farmers, fishermen, and shipbuilders. During the last half of the twentieth century, first the Italians, then the northern Europeans discovered the islands natural beauty and its splendid beaches and it slowly became a sleepy village of olive farmers and fishermen only in the off season. Now known as The Diamond of the Sporades, Skiathos is nevertheless unable or unwilling to accomodate large cruise ships and still maintains a small boutique island feel. Yet because its a vacation destination, during the tourist season, one never knows who or what will be stepping off the next plane or sailing in on the next yacht. Vasilis the Jeweler, a large jovial man with a shop on the quay, has a signed photograph from former President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, thanking him for a bottle of his home-made tsipouro Vasilis gave to Colin Powell, who had wandered into his shop, to give to Bush aboard the My Alexander, which was moored in the bay at Megaliamos . Vasilis even poured two shots from the bottle and first drank his to prove it wasnt poison, then poured another for himself and he and the former Secretary of State toasted each other and drank to President Bush. The Beatles tried to buy the satellite island of Tsougria to establish their recording studio and build houses for everyone in the band. Skiathos picturesque port was used as the island in the film Mama Mia.

Still, for most of the year, even with the technological revolution, not much has changed for centuries on this small, sleepy island. The layers of their history are wrapped around Skiathans like an onion, the core of which is Dionysus, and the thick middle layers moulding the nature and character of the people, while the outermost, thinnest skin, is the actual effect of tourism on them. Men still plant vegetable gardens and harvest their olives and grow their own grapes for their wine. Their wives still can fruit, pick wild greens, and make preserves. Those that can afford it, keep animals for meat and dairy products: sheep and goats, chickens and turkeys. Men with their hounds and whistles hunt partridge, pheasant, and hare in the off season. Almost everyone has a small boat for fishing and skin diving. And there still exists the ancient need for religion as an organizing principle, first with Dionysus and now with the Most Holy Virgin, the Panayia, the islands current protector. There are even holidays where the rituals are the same but for the substitution of one name for another.

To live with the Skiathans is to know them, for they hide nothing and are quite generous with themselves. The sketches in this book are an attempt to capture the spirit of this ancient people living on this small island in the modern world.

Im sorry the tall, thin bank manager whispered, loathing herself. She had known this man since their first school year. She had always liked him. Almost everyone did. Tall and blonde, with broad shoulders, wide forearms, and a dimpled chin, the man was always cheerfully selfless and generous. Today he brought three eggs from his chickens, which he did from time to time, to distribute to the first one he saw who didnt have access to fresh eggs. Then he would wave them away when they offered him any thanks, delighting only in the sharing of what little wealth he had. Having come from a poor family and having never accumulated much on his own, his bank account, never more than three figures, had been slowly drained the past two years and lately there was no new money to deposit, so the manager hadnt seen him in months.

Were not lending money for boat and home repairs right now she shifted in her seat. Im sorry. Really. Its the crisis. You know.

Because the Greek government had recklessly overspent, the Greek banks suddenly found themselves with limited access to wholesale markets to fund their lending activity. A simple fisherman, the man had no idea of the larger economic picture as he nervously fingered his beads in his clasped hands hidden under a knit watch cap in his lap.