On 25 September 2017, less than a week after I had started my fieldwork on Samothráki, a small and remote island in north-eastern Greece, the island suddenly flooded overnight and was subsequently declared to be in a state of emergency that would last for one year. In the wake of this disaster, islanders reflected on their relationship with their surrounding environment and how this had contributed to the intensity of the flood. This article discusses three aspects of traditional knowledge that the islanders thought had not been preserved but that were required to keep the island's development sustainable. In this case, traditional knowledge is defined as ‘knowledge and know-how accumulated across generations, which guide human societies in their innumerable interactions with their surrounding environment’ (Nakashima et al. 2012: 29). Through this process, I argue, the islanders attempted to re-approach their relationship with their surrounding environment, which revealed aspects of traditional knowledge that can be harnessed by local, and particularly small island, communities to mitigate the tipping point of climate change (i.e. the climate crisis) and ways to do so successfully under the present circumstances.
The Story of the Rock Chained to the Mountain
A big rock rests chained on the top of the mountain. Should the rock roll down, the entire village underneath will be destroyed. Pieces of this rock had rolled in the past, so locals tied it to the mountain with chains. If those chains break, the rock will roll and the village will be wiped out.
Of course, there has never been an actual rock chained to the mountain above Chóra. The village flooded overnight, between 25 and 26 September 2017, while a squall that weather services had failed to forecast developed into a deluge that dropped a year's worth of rain over the severely eroded mountain surrounding Chóra (Figure 1). The next day, islanders started recalling this story and sharing it again by word of mouth, a story that some claimed to have heard from their grandparents and that their grandparents had heard from their elders.
Detail of one side of the mountain surrounding Chóra with erosion being clearly seen, Samothráki, 2017 (Photo by author)
Citation: Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 33, 1; 10.3167/ajec.2024.330105
There is ambivalence over the exact volume of rain that fell on Samothráki in the first morning hours of 26 September 2017; or to be more precise, there is a lack of information and measurements. As the mayor of the island at that time had told me, the local measuring device of the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS), located considerably far from the main outbreak of the rainfall which was above Chóra, broke down and stopped reporting at 2:39 AM, with heavier volumes of rain yet to come. When the squall first broke out in the evening of 25 September, the device reported 237 millimetres of rain per hour, whereas at 3:00 AM on 26 September the live, online coverage of HNMS allegedly momentarily showed an estimation of 700 millimetres of rain per hour.
Looking to verify this information in the subsequent annual report of significant weather and climatic events (Tasopoulou et al. 2019), I came across different data. In that report, it was mentioned that the daily precipitation for 26 September 2017 was 46.8 millimetres, but that was according to measurements taken by an airport station on the mainland approximately 90 kilometres away from Chóra and with a sea standing between the two points. This distance becomes particularly problematic considering that, in an islander's own words, ‘there are three weathers working throughout the island; one [zone is] in Ano Meriá, one in Chóra and another one [is] at Pachiá Ammos’. Indeed, Samothráki is characterised by a remarkably high altitude of 1,611 metres within a surface area of just 180 square kilometres, with those three different zones experiencing different weather conditions due to their positionality in relation to the mountain.
Due to a lack of a locally placed measuring device good enough to survive the deluge, to this day an exact estimation of the volume of rain that fell during the deluge cannot be provided. Yet, islanders unanimously agreed that this weather event was unprecedented. As a matter of fact, no one remembered seeing or recalled having heard or read of Chóra flooding ever before. It is this reported experience of the deluge by islanders themselves, as well as the increased occurrence of similar phenomena across Greece (see, for example, Kotsira 2021) that make this particular environmental disaster on Samothráki stand out as a result of the climate crisis.
Similarly, there was no ambivalence regarding the impact of the deluge. The residents of Chóra walked outside of their homes, when the rain stopped on the morning of 26 September, to find several parts of their village under water, while other parts were already buried in mud and rocks that the force of the falling rain had carried away from the mountain above. Private homes, businesses, administrative buildings, the Town Hall itself, the island's hospital, Chóra's sewerage network as well as road infrastructure across the island had been damaged, some of it beyond repair. For example, the building hosting the Town Hall had to be eventually abandoned, whereas the hospital remains to this day (September 2023) under reconstruction.
To return to the story of the rock chained to the mountain, this tale was not just circulated by word of mouth, but was also posted on social media networks used by the islanders in the days that followed the storm. Intrigued by its resonance amongst the islanders right after the deluge, I tried to find out about its origins. One of my informants, in his mid-thirties, who remembered the story as a tale that his grandmother would frequently narrate when he was a child, believed that the story talked of an actual landslide that had taken place between 1900 and 1920, which probably was the result of a high-magnitude earthquake. The landslide caused rocks to hit those houses that were at the outskirts of the community, thus the houses mostly exposed to the mountain, which resulted in the death of ‘some people’, their actual number being undefined in the narrative that had been passed down to him.
The mountain above Chóra was bare back then, as its reforestation only took place after World War II, between 1946 and 1949, and continued in phases for several decades, to keep the existing soil from rolling and to prevent erosion. A section of the forest grown since then was burnt in an accidental fire in the summer of 2009. What followed was an earthquake of local magnitude seven on the Richter scale in the summer of 2014 that did not result in any substantial damage to the village but still caused minor landslides. Yet, a more decisive factor had already contributed to the expansion of erosion across the mountain above Chóra as well as more widely on the island, and that was overgrazing.
The Impact of Ninety Thousand Goats
In the late twentieth century, subsidies provided by the European Union (EU) to livestock-holders rocketed the number of goats on Samothráki to some ninety thousand, the subsidy amount being calculated per (goat) capita. As the numbers of animals grew larger, livestock-holders were not able to capitalise on all of them, and, as a result, many were abandoned to run free. Instead of living off the animal products, the shepherds were now surviving on what looked like a wage. A key factor that enabled the perpetuation of this situation was the absence of a cadastre for Samothráki, resulting in eventually having registered more kilometres of pastoral land – a precondition for increasing the numbers of animals one was owning – than the actual circumference of the island. It is nowadays acknowledged on the island that the over-registration of supposedly private pastoral lands was not happening in ignorance of the relevant (local, national and European) authorities. Besides, stockbreeding was promoted and funded as a feature of the European peripheral identity (Lorent et al. 2009).
The registration of land on Samothráki only started taking place in March 2015 and is still being processed. To this day, driving around the island one will see wild goats running across the road, beside or even towards the moving vehicles. Several of them are owned and fed by stockbreeders, but due to a lack of sufficient private land the goats roam free. As the subsidy amounts have in the meantime been reduced, stockbreeders are faced with an increased population of animals and limited resources to sustain them and trade their by-products (meat, cheese, milk, yogurt, wool, etc).
Knowing how much overgrazing has contributed to the erosion of the mountain above Chóra, the story of the chained rock acquires multiple dimensions. On the one hand, it appeared that, despite the ambiguity of its origins, people had rushed to make didactic connections between its – admittedly limited – content and the flood. On the other hand, another connection lurks between the flood and the erosion on the mountain and, as such, between the flood and overgrazing too. From a story signalling some imminent danger on the mountain, it becomes a story of the repercussions of human activity. In this latter context, some residents of Chóra also recalled elders warning them in the previous decades when the village was expanding that it could all be in vain if the torrent of Kamára – on the dried passage of which across the village buildings had been added over the past decades – is ‘awoken’. And when the torrent of Kamára did ‘wake up’ during the deluge, it brought back to memory much more than just a story.
Water Passages
As the first squall breaks out and progresses in the evening of 25 September 2017, my neighbours next door, Perséas and Androméda,1 though I am still a stranger to them, invite me into their house so I am not alone while the bad weather lasts. Familiar with the weather conditions on the island and Chóra's surrounding environment, they are alarmed by the squall. Myself, unfamiliar yet with all these, I am not, but I welcome the invitation.
There is already a considerable amount of water rushing through Chóra's cobbled streets, and as a result of this Perséas has to leave to help representatives of the Municipality remove a grate covering the main sewer on top of the village's central set of stairs, as it was blocked already before the squall started. The evening squall also forced mud and small-size rocks through the grate, so removing it completely was the only way to make sure that the sewer would take the water in and reduce the amount of water rushing through Chóra's streets.
Perséas and Androméda help me familiarise myself with what is happening and, more importantly, with why it is happening. Perséas, born and raised on Samothráki, explains once he returns that the grate is not the main problem. Architecture is actually a bigger one. Traditionally, after a series of two or three buildings there would be a short, steep and downwards passage, sometimes so narrow that it would be impassable by an adult's body, which allowed for the amount of water produced by rain to move continuously downwards, and consequently away from the village, which stands some 200 metres up the mountain. But the tourist expansion of the village had left no room, perhaps no consideration either, for this precaution.
In the only ethnographic monograph written about Samothráki to this day (Kolodny 1985), we find out that most islanders had migrated and worked in factories in Stuttgart between the 1950s and 1970s, to the extent that Emile Kolodny comments that during these two decades the capital of the island could not be found in Chóra, but ‘at the banks of river Neckar and especially in Cannstatt’ (1985: 14, my translation), while elsewhere he notes that ‘Samothráki channelled into immigration almost the entirety of its workforce’ (1985: 134, my translation). Yet, unlike the observed tendency for family resettlement, very few Samothracians remained in Stuttgart past the 1970s. By the time recession affected Germany in 1975, and Germany started planning for returning Gastarbeiters to their homelands, most Samothracians had already returned to the island or had settled on the mainland across Samothraki in the city of Alexandrúpolis, enjoying a more prosperous family life either way (1985). In Kolodny's monograph, we can see that as Gastarbeiters returned to Samothráki, or even before that, when they had raised a satisfactory amount of money to send remittances back to their families, the built landscape of the island started changing. The tourist sector, people's personal properties and even the ferry connection on Samothráki were all developed by remittances sent home from Stuttgart.
In Chóra, in particular, this resulted in two different types of expansion. First, family homes – traditionally limited to thirty to fifty square metres for the whole family to share, with an additional storage space of half that size on the ground floor – expanded, or newer and bigger ones were built in their place. Second, tourist infrastructures flourished. Chóra became – and remains to this day – popular amongst tourists for its traditional architecture, elements of which are still compulsory to maintain, such as roof tiles and the cobbled streets. And yet, there was no space to be left for water passages (Figure 2), the knowledge of the precautionary use of which appeared to have drifted into oblivion, especially at the densely populated and touristically attractive central alley of Chóra – which was also the place worst affected by the deluge.
An example of a water passage between two buildings in Chóra, the one to the left clearly abandoned and possibly the reason why the passage still stands, Samothráki, 2017. (Photo by author)
Citation: Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 33, 1; 10.3167/ajec.2024.330105
Chóra is mainly divided into two large neighbourhoods (mahaládes) connected via its central, tourist alley, taking five to ten minutes to walk from one side to the other. The central – and overly expanded for tourist purposes – alley as well as the eastern neighbourhood of Chóra – also slowly expanding to cover tourist demand – are situated underneath the bare side of the mountain. They also stand between two torrents, both of which were overflown during the deluge, Kamára (literally meaning ‘Arch’), which has already been mentioned above, and Kakiá Meriá (literally meaning ‘Bad Place’) at the east end of the neighbourhood. On the other hand, the western neighbourhood of Chóra – where mainly private homes are to be found – lies under the hill of Vrihós, which still to this day has a substantial number of pine trees and vegetation protecting it from flooding water coming from the mountain. This mountain side also rises to a lower altitude compared to the one above the central alley and the eastern neighbourhood, thus also reducing the force of the rushing water. The stark difference between these two sides of the village became obvious the day after the deluge, when people living in the western neighbourhood had little if no damages at all to report, or no understanding of the destruction until they saw the other neighbourhood.
Mobilising Traditional Knowledge
The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 2003, defines as intangible cultural heritage (ICH) domains that amongst others include traditional craftsmanship as well as a community's knowledge about its interaction with nature (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage 2023). Sophia Labadi (2022) argues that the distinction between tangible and intangible heritage, as these were defined in the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention respectively, is essentially an artificial one. The 2003 Convention was nonetheless regarded as a bottom-up approach that would encourage communities to actively participate in the process and reconsider over time which domains of their ICH would be maintained and which no longer resonated with them. Yet, Mairéad Nic Craith (2020) notes that when communities have to decide which aspects of heritage, particularly living heritage, are representative of their way of life, they can open up broader debates, or even bring to the fore underlying nuances that are hard to reconcile in the community. Philip McDermott and Sara McDowell (2021) also raise the dynamic character of heritage, its temporal and regional shifts, as well as the antagonistic interactions between different communities when it comes to safeguarding their heritage. Moreover, decisions over which aspects of heritage should be preserved are usually dependent on contemporary socio-economic factors, and at times even political ones (Harrison et al. 2020; Nic Craith 2008).
In what has been discussed so far about Samothráki, there are three aspects of traditional knowledge that, at least until recently, have been bypassed for the sake of financial development. These are first, a story passed down from one generation to the next reminding residents of Chóra of the limitations of their surrounding environment; second, knowledge of how to use natural resources without exhausting them (i.e. overgrazing); and third, local craftsmanship knowledge about the expansion of the village not happening at the expense of the surrounding environment.
Yet, following the return of Gastarbeiters and the reduction of livestock subsidies by the EU, tourism became the island's most critical source of income. The so-called ‘tourist season’, however, does not last more than three months in Samothráki, with the majority of tourists visiting between mid-July and mid-August. During that period, the island's population, which for the rest of the year counts about 2,500 residents, can temporarily triple in size. Therefore, the need to ever expand so that more visitors can be accommodated simultaneously should come as no surprise when one's annual subsistence largely depends on a month's earnings or so.
Recalling their traditional knowledge in the aftermath of the deluge proved that, in spite of the unprecedented nature of the disaster, the islanders had the interpretative tools they needed to rationalise the most extreme of their experiences. The climate crisis may not have been a reality for the previous generations, but appreciation that a balance needs be maintained between human activity and the natural environment had been nonetheless passed down. The mountainous surroundings of Chóra had been treated as a possible threat to the community long before the deluge of 2017 took place. However, while the conceptual tools apparently could be easily retrieved by the islanders to reconsider their relationship with their surrounding environment at the island's most critical moment, having the tools does not necessarily mean that one can apply them. Labadi argues that for ICH to be sustained as living heritage through the generations ‘certain socioeconomic and environmental elements of the intangible manifestations must be preserved, particularly their raw materials’ (2022: 60). But the mountain above Chóra is already falling apart; where many water passages used to stand now buildings have expanded; and while the population of goats on the island has dropped from its ninety thousand peak, it still remains unsustainable for what the natural environment can support. In a similarly unsustainable way, the tourist sector continues to develop, with the majority of local businesses remaining focussed on meeting the needs of an ever-growing clientele within the time-limited ‘tourist season’.
While Samothráki appears to be at the crossroads of the climate crisis, with important changes required to be made locally, being an island provides an invaluable asset. Island populations are admittedly more adaptable to various types of change, precisely because of their geographical characteristics. The UNESCO report on using traditional knowledge for adapting to climate change (Nakashima et al. 2012) recognises that, climate change aside, small islands face a multitude of challenges: being limited masses of land surrounded by sea and thus more susceptible to extreme weather; being in remote locations and with poor local infrastructures; and being dependent on inland services, thus also being dependent on marine or other types of connections.
Even though the small islands section in the UNESCO report (Nakashima et al. 2012) is focussed on non-European examples, such as the small island developing states (SIDS), the aforementioned challenges describe Samothráki perfectly. As a result of these inherent challenges, island populations continuously develop adaptive practices, such as local forecasting techniques, an example of which can be found in the zonation of Samothráki by islanders themselves according to the ‘three weathers’ mentioned above. While the UNESCO report (Nakashima et al. 2012) suggests that traditional knowledge can set a good base for locally appropriate approaches to respond to the climate crisis, it also acknowledges that this type of knowledge is fading away largely due to islands becoming more reliant on their inland connections. However, this is also because this knowledge transfer is not supported by formal education (2012).
Conclusion: Disseminating Traditional Knowledge
So far, I have identified aspects of traditional knowledge promising as a response to the climate crisis, but the question remains as to how this can be achieved on Samothráki. Recent research suggests that, in light of the inevitable change to be brought about by climate change and its likewise inevitable impact on heritage, embracing the inevitability of losing certain (tangible) sites and (intangible) practices can facilitate decision-making over what to preserve and how to accomplish that (Harrison et al. 2020). Indeed, the water passages of Chóra already removed for the purposes of sprawling expansion cannot be reinstated, but provisions can be put in place for those remaining intact. Similarly, the ecological management of the mountain above Chóra will be of critical importance for the village's preservation in the years to come.
But, to return to the aspiration of the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, decisions over the future of ICH need to be made by and for the community. And while apparently the preservation of the community itself is a precondition for such a process, Samothráki has been struggling with a declining population since the late twentieth century, with ever more young people leaving the island once they graduate from school. If deciding on the island's heritage is to become a practice for shaping the future (Harrison et al. 2020), then it must involve the younger generations, and schooling can play a key part in that. The school curriculum and the school environment allow for disseminating traditional knowledge to the pupils whilst supporting them to be critical towards it. In other words, considering which aspects of this knowledge are still relevant or applicable. Young people are globally much more preoccupied with and concerned about the climate crisis (Clayton et al. 2021). Therefore, enabling pupils to get actively involved with traditional knowledge can inspire them to assume ecological responsibility for their island, or at least for the mountain that collapses into the(ir) village.
Acknowledgements
Research findings discussed in this article were collected while working on my doctoral degree at the University of St Andrews (2016–2020), with funding from the University of St Andrews, Gilchrist Educational Trust and the Edinburgh Association of University Women.
Note
Both names are pseudonyms.
References
Clayton, S., C. M. Manning, M. Speiser and A. N. Hill (2021), Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities, Responses (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association).
Harrison, R. et al. (2020), Heritage Futures: Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices (London: UCL Press).
Kolodny, E. (1985), Samothraki on the Banks of Neckar: Greek Migrants in Stuttgart, (trans. [from French to Greek] H. Dali and A. Hatzidakis) (Athens: National Centre for Social Research).
Kotsira, E. (2021), ‘Inviting Disasters’, Allegra Lab, 14 May. https://allegralaboratory.net/inviting-disasters-or-what-my-phd-told-me-about-disaster-management-in-greece/.
Labadi, S. (2022), Rethinking Heritage for Sustainable Development (London: UCL Press).
Lorent, H. et al. (2009), ‘Livestock Subsidies and Rangeland Degradation in Central Crete’, Ecology and Society 14, no. 2: 41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26268320.
McDermott, P. and S. McDowell (2021), ‘Cultural Heritage across European Borders: Bridges or Walls?’, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 30, no. 1: 96–103. https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2021.300106.
Nakashima, D. J. et al. (2012), Weathering Uncertainty: Traditional Knowledge for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation (Paris: UNESCO).
Nic Craith, M. (2008), ‘Intangible Cultural Heritages: The Challenge for Europe’, Anthro- pological Journal of European Cultures 17, no. 1: 54–73. https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2008.01701004.
Nic Craith, M. (2020), The Vanishing World of The Islandman: Narrative and Nostalgia (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan).
Tasopoulou, A., A. Mamara, E. Chatziapostolou and N. Karatarakis (2019), Significant Weather and Climatic Events in Greece during 2017, Hellenic National Meteorological Service. http://www.hnms.gr/emy/en/pdf/2017_GRsignificantEVENT_en.pdf (accessed 2 August 2019).
UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (2023), Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention (accessed 8 June 2023).
