âBarren, rocky, arid Kalymnosâ. The birthplace of Evi Olympitouâs father, and a place of particular emotional involvement for Evi herself; the island ultimately proved to be her solace. It is with great satisfaction we read her exclaim, âI, too, became Kalymnianâ, at the close of the bookâs introduction. To be precise, she wrote: âThe study of the sponge fishery made me Kalymnianâ. The island of Kalymnos, a land of extreme and eternal poverty, was not only a local refuge in Eviâs search for her cultural identity, but also the place where the Gordian knot of a personal, scientific dilemma was cut. There, on the island, and here, in this book, Evi answered the question âhistory or folklore?â This question preoccupied her in a dynamic and, I believe, completely rational way: History and Folklore.
The dilemma may sound commonplace; however, the result is exciting because it no longer concerns the conventional co-existence of history and folklore, whereby a chapter of an historic introduction, or historic context, albeit sufficient, informs the reader of the âotherâ historic details of the land and its society. This, however, is not the place to examine the relation of history to folklore. There are serious scientific issues to address, arising from the institutional status of folklore, including the issue of historic material segmentation, and the conversion of history into methodology; issues which the Greek scientific community tends to avoid. In this brief preface, I will approach history and folklore, and their conventional content, as they have been experienced by both my generation and, I think, the younger generation of Greek researchers to which, of course, Evi belonged.
In the present book, history and folklore are intermingled to such an extent that the two areas â the two itineraries for discussion â are seemingly indistinct. If the two methodologies, those of history and folklore, remained separate in the preparatory phases of Eviâs research, in the work itself they have been distilled into a shared, common endeavour with internal difficulties, both on the abstract methodological level, as well as on the level of execution. The organization of the themes addressed in the book, the distribution of content, the analogies drawn from factual data and research findings, were only some of the considerable difficulties that had to be conquered.
Moreover, in every Greek research area one encounters local peculiarities and a plethora of obstacles that must be overcome. Among other things, the Greek researcher has to cope with diverging cultural traditions; various, successive foreign occupations; proximity to and osmosis with foreign-speaking populations; radical and profound geographical particularities and peculiarities. Working in Dodecanesian history, multiple difficulties arise, even where conducting straight-forward research is concerned. For example, prior to the incorporation of the islands in the national core in 1947, two successive foreign occupations â the Ottoman, followed by the Italian occupation â created additional bibliographic issues, and necessitated specialized research and information. The Greek community of Kalymnos, although it never lost the idiosyncratic characteristics of its internal organization, had to be studied first through the administrative apparatus imposed by the prolonged Ottoman administration, and second, that which was imposed in the thirty-year Italian occupation before Greek state regulations came into force on the island. During foreign occupations, and most significantly the Ottoman occupation, the community of Kalymnos might have had serious room for autonomy and acting on its own behalf â a point which this book often showcases â but communal acts had to comply with the more general policy of the central state power; this was a restriction that affected the range of autonomy and margins of communal administration on the Greek islands.
On this point as well, Evi Olympitouâs method of addressing the topic is one of the best examples of a modern historical-anthropological approach available. Aside from the fact that she does not veer off into a separate, self-contained narrative of community actions, or state rulings of the time, Olympitou monitored and investigated the conditions of social and economic life on Kalymnos, to the degree to which, and interconnected with, how she addresses sponge fishing. Moreover, in the spirit of historical anthropology imbued with the concept of prolonged, Mediterranean duration, Evi neither treated the profound changes that foreign sovereigns brought in as absolute, nor did she underestimate their importance and the consequences of the changes they put in place for the economic life of the island. This is of particular significance given that the core of the Kalymnian economy is the sponge fishing industry, which is particularly fragile because it relies on a single technique.
However, the need to respect the ruling presence, first Ottoman, later Italian, and then Greek, becomes imperative because new methods and means imposed on the archaic art of sponge fishing, from the mid-19th century onwards, were truly game-changing. New technologies in sponge fishing such as the scaphander diving suit, not only exceeded the limits of the enforcement of community power, they also exceeded the intentions and the will of state sovereigns. The introduction of the scaphander diving suit was not, however, the only occurrence that reversed long-standing labour and life practices. Indeed, the introduction of new national restrictions on the once-free sponge beds of the Mediterranean; the appearance of new types of enterprise, the arrival of labour forces from neighbouring islands, and so on, are some of the issues that called for strong interventions and required a state presence, or its upgrading. During the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, old community and guild provisions were no longer able to deal with the complexity of relations that arose from technological change (i.e. the scaphander diving suit) and, more generally, from what was, at the time, the new economy.
Anyone undertaking research into the sponge fishery â an old but renewed economic activity, especially in the late phase of its development â is called upon to monitor state interventions, given their absolutely vital role at the central level where decisions are made (Constantinople, Rome, Athens), as well as on the local level of their implementation on Kalymnos. Thus, we return to our initial thoughts on the dual methodology of this book, that is, to the fact that this peculiar professional activity â sponge fishing â cannot be studied outside the scope of general conditions of that period and, in particular, not outside the scope of state interventions, both on a national and on a local level. The result of such state interventions functioned in a complementary, as well as in a decisive or paradigm-changing way, with long-standing methods of fishing for sponges, which are resistant to change. Ultimately, this is related to the traditional, long-standing Kalymnian lifestyle, which is likewise resistant to change. Evi, I believe, knew and understood the meaning of the âparadigm shiftâ that took place with the arrival of the scaphander diving suit on the island of Kalymnos along with other modern changes, and she attempted to fathom the new historical conditions in which industrial-era sponge fishing, with its âman-eating machinesâ, was destined to be part of a cycle of rebirth, evolution, and decay.
For folklorist Evi Olympitou, the emergence of the scaphander diving suit was the critical point in her deliberation on and treatment of folklore and history. The diving suit is at the crux of the longtime of folklore, and the short-time of history; a point at which societies are tested, and new kinds of relationships and organizational forms emerge. Through this moment in the mid-19th century at which Kalymnian society was tested, Olympitou saw the before-and-after versions of the life of sponge fishermen. She âreadâ the century-old, sponge-fishing adventure through the transition â the schism, or shift â brought about in the community by the scaphander diving suit. In an innovative approach to her own disciplinary orientation, Evi was as interested in the ancient method of diving with the âskandalopetraâ, as she was in the modern use of the scaphander diving suit and the ânovelâ violation of security limits that came with it for investors and crews. In other words, Olympitou engaged with a wide range of topics, and this involved spiritual courage and personal integrity, both of which are present throughout the book.
Sponge fishing is a professional activity that requires specialized skills, and which is characterized by high risk. Evi Olympitou studied technological change in the form of the scaphander diving suit from the point of view of an historian, while she continued to see the life and behaviours of sponge fishermen from the point of view of a folklorist. This methodological rapprochement of history and folklore in Eviâs approach to the world of sponge fishing provides answers to a number of questions, such as that of social equilibrium, which does not appear to have been practically disrupted on the island. During the prolonged period of traditional sponge fishing with naked divers and the skandalopetra, a balance of risk-benefit was established, however, as Evi points out, there is a certain tendency to euphemistically under-report this balance, ignoring the fact that naked diving also had its victims. In the era of the scaphander diving suit, this did not seem to give rise to an aversion to the profession of sponge fishing. Without a doubt, losses (increased deaths and disability) were painful yet accepted, much as warrior societies accept danger. And, where one might expect a change in the game with the use of the scaphander, yet another new balance of risk-benefit came to dominate, and to complicate (or even cancel) the work of well-intentioned opponents of the new machines. It is this new risk-benefit balance that Evi sought to understand. Although the deaths and unprecedented disabilities caused by the technological innovation of the scaphander diving suit increased, this was not sufficient to significantly disrupt the social fabric of the island. This was a time of high expectations and incomes as a new logic of risk-benefit took shape, which affected all of the social groups on the island.
The new conditions were: more intense monetisation leading to bank loans, greater visibility and commercialisation of the product, the introduction of seasonal workers from other islands to the islandâs sponge-fishing labour force, less-specialized workers and, of course, reduced remuneration. All things considered, this is a miniature version of the beginnings of the industrial revolution, including various iterations and images of the period. This insight is one more important contribution offered by Eviâs book.
Another crucial and ever-present topic present in this study is the issue of accidents. The dimension of danger for the people involved is perhaps an inconspicuous axis in this book, however in the chapters containing Olympitouâs more specialized research, she carefully attempts to illuminate all sides of the issue, and here her moderation and restraint become even more evident. The intensification of labour, driven by new economic conditions, underwrites the sacrifice of the divers âto the Minotaur of sponge fisheryâ, but Eviâs detailed approach to the phenomenon results in a complex narrative, the minutia of which Evi helps us to discover. Such details include the small number of scaphander diving suits per vessel, which meant that the shipowners demanded shorter periods of under-water decompression for divers working with the scaphander suit; imperfect knowledge and inept use of machinery on the part of the so-called âspecializedâ staff; the diversâ failure to obey to the technical staffâs commands in their attempt to increase their yield and thus their remuneration; and, lastly, largely at the close of the period addressed in this book, the employment of under-specialized staff as noted above.
While this book is rich in documentation, bibliography, legal provisions, oral testimonies, and so on, the key issue of accidents is elucidated by means of arguments from all sides and all players, which are, in my opinion, less conflicting than what one might expect. âStories of these darkest moments in the history sponge fishing tell of the just and the unjust, the innocent and the guilty alikeâ (current volume, p. 257), she concludes. And Evi does not play favorites:
The health risks from lengthy dives at great depths â paralyses and sudden death â may well have been attributable to a lack of knowledge of decompression procedures, although these procedures do indeed appear to have been followed as required. Risk taking was, however, the only way to repay debts [and the platika paid in advance], and to generate profits for investors in the sponge fishery, as well as for those practicing it. Moreover, the time required for decompression, which necessitated a gradual, prolonged ascent to surface, would have been an impossible luxury for sponge-fishing vessels equipped with just one breathing device, one scaphander helmet, and two suits at most. (current volume, p. 257)
A little further on she speaks of âthe intoxication of the deepâ âwhen they espied rich sponge-bearing areasâ and the accidents that it caused (current volume, p. 259). In other words: the more intense the work pace, the more acute the benefit problem for shipowners (businessmen-investors), the greater the tendency to neglect safety rules in pursuit of greater gains. These factors combined all dramatically increased risks and losses. And, along with these vital elements, secondary â albeit not negligible occurrences â such as professional shortfalls in auxiliary staff, exacerbated the already high-risk conditions of the profession.
With her boundless love for the people of the sponge fishery, Evi Olympitou examines, in a thorough and deliberative fashion, economic mechanisms and human behaviours, synthesized against the background of the island of Kalymnos, largely over the years of transition from structural stagnation to the abrupt shifts of the 19th and 20th centuries. Investors and captains; divers and mechanics â they were all children of a society that struggled desperately to survive on that small Dodecanesian island, on which poverty and âdangerous livingâ are ever-present. Sponge fishing deaths and disabilities were not uncommon on the island, and the pages of Evi Olympitouâs book are filled with the resulting tensions and human emotions. The dignity of her ancestors â also a constant in Eviâs own brief life â prevented her from being swept up in inappropriate and unproductive sentimentality. Evi did not feel pity for Kalymnian sponge fishermen. She shed no easy, unfelt tears for anyone. She understood Kalymnian sponge fishermen honestly, both them and their time.