Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for the British ‘like that of the Greeks’. Was Galadriel, the queen of elves, inspired by Circe and Calypso? Bilbo by Odysseus? What do Ajax and Boromir have in common, and what is the link between the fate of Atlantis and the fall of Numenor?
Interviewee: Dimitris Kolovos
Interview by: Maya Filippopoulou
Producer: Charis Pagonidou
Sound Designer: Dimitris Patsaros
Sound Editor: Spyros Lymperopoulos
Istorima is the largest project for recording and preserving oral histories of Greece. More than 1,000 young researchers find narrators listen, collect and preserve stories of people from all over Greece: Stories of their hometowns, stories of love, stories that changed Greece or defined it, modern or old stories. Stories that are not recorded in the history books and that could easily be lost in time.
It was created by the journalist Sofia Papaioannou and the historian Katherine Fleming and is implemented with a founding grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), as part of its initiative to Restart and Empower Youth (see more on www.snf.org). More than 20,000 stories are gradually being published in full on www.archive.istorima.org. Excerpts of the stories are published in the form of podcasts, videos, or written stories on www.istorima.org.