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Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
John Esse Larsen
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are a small archipelago in the North Atlantic between Norway and Iceland. It has been proposed that they contained the island of Ogygia, the home of Atlas’ daughter Calypso. Plutarch recorded that Ogygia was five days’ sail west of Britain and has been incorporated into the theories of a number of writers supporting a North Sea Atlantis, such as Felice Vinci and later John Esse Larsen.
*Larsen contends that Odysseus means ‘Isse from the island Od’, a former Danish island, which is now a peninsula. In fact he interprets Homer’s Odyssey as a description of a trip around the Baltic Sea(c). Furthermore the Pillars of Herakles have also been identified by Larsen with the village of Eide on the Faroes(a).*
In November 2018, I was directed to a German website(b) which also refers to the Faroe Islands as having an Atlantean connection, but in this case, Jan, its author, proposes that Atlantis was located between Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land explaining that “It looks like our Earth is Atlantis, and in the northern part of the Earth was hyperborea, Greenland might have been Mu, and Antarctica was Lemuria. It was a pole shift that caused Atlantis to go down. At that time, Spitzbergen was probably at the height of the Canary Islands and the Antarctic must have been located at the height of today’s Philippines.”
(a) https://odisse.me.uk/odysseus-isse-from-the-island-od-in-denmark-2.html
*(b) https://ich-fand-atlantis.org/atlantis/ (link broken Sept. 2019)
(c) https://odisse.me.uk/odysseus-tour-round-the-baltic-sea.html
Mycenaeans
Mycenaean is the name given to the culture of ancient Greece (excluding Crete) during the Late Bronze Age (1500–1100 BC). They were also called Achaeans. The controversial writer Felice Vinci maintains that a Northern European tribe was referred to as Achaeans by Homer and that they migrated south and founded the Mycenaean civilisation.
Among the many geographical identifications of Homeric locations in the Baltic by Vinci is his claim that Mycenae was probably located on the same site as Copenhagen and associated Thebes with Stockholm [019.218]. Compare this with Iman Wilkens‘ claim that Mycenae had been situated in northern France [610.121]!
However, it was Martin Persson Nilsson (1874-1967), a Swedish historian, who was an earlier proponent of a Nordic origin for the Mycenaeans. A Northern European location for Mycenae (and Sparta) has also been proposed by John Esse Larsen, who has specified Hareskov in northeast Denmark(d).
However, recent genetic studies suggest that the mainland Mycenaeans and the Cretan Minoans share a common ancestry with Neolithic populations of what are today Turkey and Greece(c).
Stavros Papamarinopoulos claims [750.73] that the Athens described by Plato in the Critias is an accurate description of Mycenaean Athens and then leaps to the conclusion that because the details of Athens provided by Plato are correct, then it must follow that his depiction of Atlantis is equally reliable! For me, this is an unacceptable non sequitur, as Plato lived in Athens and would have been fully aware of the city’s landmarks and tradition. On the other hand, he had not been to Atlantis, in fact, he was somewhat vague regarding its actual location. Jason Colavito also took issue with Papamarinopoulos’ contention(f).
However, there is evidence of Mycenaean warriors fighting alongside Egyptian soldiers of the 18th Dynasty(e)!
Austen Atkinson in his Impact Earth[109] suggested the possibility that the unexplained ending of the Mycenaean civilisation could be explained as a consequence of Earth’s encounter with Phaëton referred to by Plato (Tim.22c-d).
However, there are current studies(a) being made into the possibility that earthquakes were responsible for the demise of the Mycenaeans and the start of the Greek ‘Dark Ages’.
However, the earthquake theory is also under attack(b), with the proposal that either an uprising or invasion was responsible for the demise of Mycenaean Greece.
A recent outline[226] of the Mycenaean culture has been produced by Rodney Castleden, who has also written about Atlantis.
(b) http://web.archive.org/web/20250215123918/https://www.tornosnews.gr/en/greek-news/culture/30911-new-study-mycenaean-civilization-might-have-collapsed-due-to-uprising-or-invasion.html
(c) https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-mystery-of-where-the-minoans-came-from-solved-1.5439462
(d) http://odisse.me.uk/the-danaan-islands-seeland-and-arcadia.html
(e) https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/x4z1qi7hp27q8mjvo74cbzz9uc8irm?rq=abydos