The Legend Of Scirocco And Tramontana In Sardinia 0 Commentaires

by Daniela Toti

In Sardinia, the Winds are not just air currents: they have character, voice, and memory. Among them, Scirocco and Tramontana carry with them an ancient legend, made of love and storm.

Scirocco is a wind. He comes from the Southeast, bringing with him the red sand of the desert and the fever of faraway lands. He carries dust, thirst, memories that burn. He is the breath of a god in exile, a song broken by heat.

Tramontana, on the other hand, descends from the North, with the rigid step of snow-covered mountains. She brings clear air, bright skies, and a silence sharp as glass. She is a blade that stings the skin, but also a caress that purifies.

In Sardinia, where Winds have a voice, their story is not written in books: it is told by The Nuraghi, by The Sardinian Stones carved by the mistral, and by the old women sitting by their doorsteps, speaking to themselves, conversing with the wind.

It is said that once, the winds were free and wild. Too unruly, they were locked inside terracotta jars and hidden in a cave above Capo Testa, where granite bends like wax.

One day, a young Jana, curious like the dawn that cannot hold back, opened the jars. From them burst a roar of breaths and currents. And from that whirlwind rose two figures: Tramontana, dressed in ice and stars, and Scirocco, with the burning breath of sand.

They saw each other, and they liked each other. They decided to marry.

For a moment, it seemed possible: cold and heat, silence and song, the embrace of opposites. They tried, and for an instant their love seemed to hold up the sky. But it was only an illusion.

You can imagine the outrage of a bride of wind, proud and glacial, when her dress melted upon her. Tramontana screamed, and her cry made the mountains shake. Scirocco wept tears of fire, and wherever they fell, they scorched the earth. There was a brief, futile attempt at reconciliation: a crossing of currents, a sigh that seemed a caress. But it ended in a storm. Since then, they have spoken no more.

If he arrives, she flees. If she appears, he withdraws. And when by chance they meet over the sea of Golfo Aranci or in the gorges of Supramonte, the sky is torn apart: towers of ice against rains of fire.

And we, poor humans, pay the price. Not only headaches and overturned boats, but furious storm surges, waterspouts, and cloudbursts crashing onto towns like blows of wrath. Thus, their broken love becomes our unstable climate: now drought, now floods. A shattered balance that no longer finds peace.

Perhaps the climate changes because the hearts of the elements no longer know how to make peace. Or perhaps it is only a broken love that has not yet found a way to end.

As the elders say, watching the sea in storm: “Cando su sciroccu pigliat sa tramuntana, su mundu traballat.” (When the Scirocco takes the Tramontana, the world trembles.)