Selina Kastania – Designing a counter model to the “Blue Zone”myth
Selina is standing on top of the stairs of the Archaeological Museum in Agios Kirikos. She is waving good-bye to a group of young students she has just shown around the museum of Ikaria’s history. She is a bit tired. It’s been a long day, but a good one. Selina smiles a little as she recalls the last few days with this group of students and their professor. It had been intense days, but she did a good job. The group from Washington University had booked her to introduce them to the history of Ikaria and of course to the myth “of longevity” – a myth that is hanging as a marketing label over the island for so many years now. And Selina had put together a good programme for them: they visited Theoklitis church, the Monastery of Mounde; she introduced them to stories of the Pirates, to the Civil War in Greece, to traditional wine making and cooking on Ikaria.
Theoklitis Church, Ikaria (c) www.selinatouristguide.gr
And of course they went together swimming at Mesakti Beach and they visited the Panagyri in Platanos. The students liked it, asked a lot of questions – they had been easy going. Only today’s programme – a visit to the Archaeological Museum in Agios Kirikos – met with a bit of resistance. Broken vases and old jewellery – why should they look at that? But Selina remained persistent… and in the end, she was proven right.
The discussion she had with the professor just a few minutes ago was not only a compliment on her work, but also a confirmation that her concept for tourist tours on Ikaria is heading in the right direction. This honourable professor left the museum and said to her with emotional words: “I did not know what a long and diverse history your island has. Only now have I realised that Ikaria and the Ikarians are so much more than dancing, following a special diet and getting old. Thank you for giving us these insights. We are leaving the island with a much better understanding of its culture, its people and its history than I would have thought possible.” For Selina, this is ‘mission accomplished!’ – that is precisely the food for thought that Selina wants to achieve during her guided tours on Ikaria: to convey the long and complex history and culture of Ikaria – and thus her personal history – and to provide food for thought.
Archeological Museum Agios Kirikos, Ikaria. (c) www.selinatouristguide.gr
Selina has long been aware that Ikaria is not a simple a ‘take-away’,- even if summer on Ikaria, with its many tourists and festivals, its easy lifestyle on the beach and its long nights, might suggest exactly that. Selina is Ikarian, she grew up on this rocky island and she knows the other side of the coin.
Selina grew up in Christos Raches; her father is Ikarian and her mother is Swiss. Her mother came to Ikaria when she was young, fell in love and stayed. Her parents run a small shop together in Christos Raches and raised their two children bilingually, in Greek and German/Swiss.
The shop of Selina’s parents in Christos Raches, Ikaria (c) Birgit Urban
Selina, the older of the two siblings, was born in Switzerland, so she has Swiss and Greek citizenship. Growing up in a Greek village means that kids are always around, when the adults are gathering for various occasions. This was also the case with Selina. She loved these gatherings, not just to meet other children and play with them; rather, she loved sitting with the adults and listening to their stories. As she was a curious child and loved stories, she had found her paradise here: gossip was exchanged, world politics were discussed – a valuable addition to her history lessons at school. And over the years, this curiosity about ‘history’ in general grew. Selina fed it with documentaries on various topics, with books she read at every opportunity, and by taking on extra tasks in history lessons at school, simply because she enjoyed it. Against this backdrop, it was almost given that she would choose to study history. So, after completing her secondary education, she took the necessary tests for admission to university and joined the faculty of “History and Archaeology” at the University of Athens. Although it was great to be able to study in Athens, Selina did not like the literature studies she had to take in addition to the history courses. She wanted to study in a more research-oriented way, but this was not possible at Greek universities. So Selina looked around for other options and decided to study in Zurich, Switzerland. This was not only practical, as she knew the language and could count on her mother’s large family circle, but it was also a great financial relief for her parents. As a Swiss citizen, Selina was entitled to state support as a student, which made living and studying in the country easier. But here too, she initially had difficulties combining the subjects she wanted to study. It was a bit of a rush, caused by missed registration deadlines, incorrect subject combinations etc., but in the end, Selina ended up registering for archaeology, more by chance than anything else. And it was awful! She didn’t like it at all! She was totally bored and didn’t understand why she had to learn the different types of Greek columns in detail. She couldn’t get into the subject.
But then came the breakthrough. One lecture became an absolute gamechanger. A professor discussed the topic of ‘Grape Harvesting in Antiquity’. He showed photos of broken jugs and a clay shard that shows how grapes were pressed. Another pottery shard depicted Dionysus wearing a wreath of wine leaves on his head, surrounded by young people dancing on the grapes. The professor also pointed to a small tube through which the must flowed into a jug buried in the ground.
Traditional wine harvest on Ikaria (c) www.selinatouristguide.gr
It was a moment of revelation for Selina. She felt so connected to this ancient scene, because it was exactly how she remembered it from home. How many times had she helped her father with the grape harvest, stomping the grapes with her feet just like this? So here it was: the connection between her and her cultural past, her link with her ancestors. Suddenly, all those lectures made sense: they offered her the opportunity to understand her own socio-cultural history and to connect with it. This was not just her history, it is also her lived present on Ikaria. And she wanted to explain this connection between the past and the present to her fellow students. A long discussion ensued, during which the other students asked many questions not only about wine production, but also about Ikaria in general. Feeling this interest and having the opportunity to explain her homeland to them were very special moments for Selina. Looking back, Selina is certain that this was the starting point for her desire not only to better understand the present in the context of the past, but also to explain this to others. At that point, she had no plans to become a tour guide, but she began to take a keen interest in archaeology – always with the perspective that ‘this is my past, these are my ancestors, I am standing on their shoulders’.
Selina became truly aware of this when she took part in an excavation as an intern and was allowed to remove the bones and skull of a young woman from a grave. It turned out that the woman had been about her age. So Selina asked herself questions: how did she live? Was she in love? What was her everyday life like? Selina realised that perhaps very little had changed in the 1,000 years that lay between them.
(c) Selina Kastania, excarvation Patras 2014-2015
After more than 5 years, Selina completed her studies in Switzerland and returned to Greece. Unfortunately, jobs in the field of archaeology are hard to find in this country and are also poorly paid. So somehow, she had to reorient herself. She was still interested in history and now felt a strong need to learn more about the history of Ikaria, her homeland.
Although Selina had heard many stories about Ikaria’s past, its culture, pirates, harsh life and hunger, she now realized that there was so much she did not know, that there were so many gaps in the historical account of Ikaria. Bringing together the necessity to find a job where she could use her knowledge about history and archaeology and her wish to work more on the history of Ikaria, Selina finally opted for a Master at the University of the Aegean for Museology and Exhibition Design on Lesvos. This program focuses on how to highlight a place culturally – and this is what she wanted to do.
Selina Kastania with pictures of prisoners on Ikaria during the Greek Civil War (c) Birgit Urban
At the beginning of the semester, she discussed her plan with her professor, explaining that she would like to work on the topic of Ikaria and focus in particular on the history of the Greek Civil War. Since communists were exiled to Ikaria during this civil war, this period is still very much alive in the stories told by the Ikarians. However, there had been little research to date about this period, and this is where Selina wanted to start.
This desire also had a lot to do with her own family history. Her paternal grandfather was a communist and a resistance fighter during the civil war. He also spent time in the notorious Makronisos prison, but few details about this period of her grandfather’s life are known in her family. He himself did not talk much about it with his wife and children, and he died before Selina was born.
Selina repeatedly found that there were not only gaps in her own family history during the civil war, but that this topic was not sufficiently explored in Greece as a whole. In school textbooks, Greece’s historical reappraisal ends with the civil war, and in general, this period is hardly addressed in the current socio-political debate.
In contrast, this period is very much alive on Ikaria. Much is told about the coexistence of the Ikarians with the exiles, which was actually forbidden. The prisoners, many of whom came from the educated middle class, i.e. doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, and professors, were forced to perform hard labor, such as building roads. The Ikarians welcomed the exiles, even though it was very difficult. The islanders were poor themselves, but they did their best to support the large number of prisoners. And the prisoners greatly appreciated this by giving back to the Ikarian society: as doctors, they helped provide medical care for the locals, or they organized educational seminars, because at that time the Ikarians were not well educated.
Poster with art work of prisoners on Ikaria during the Greek Civil War (c) Birgit Urban
This period is commemorated every year on August 20 at the Munde Monastery with a large celebration organized by the Communist Party of Ikaria. During the civil war, the Munde Monastery was a sanatorium for exiled communists suffering from tuberculosis. A local association is dedicated to collecting historical documents from this period—photographs, drawings, letters—and during the ceremony, former exiles and Ikarians commemorate this time.
Driven by her interest in Ikarian history, Selina has attended this ceremony many times herself. However, this memory is only manifested on this very day. When you visit Munde Monastery, you find no references to the great and moving history of the place. To fill this gap, Selina, together with a fellow student, deliberately chose the topic “History of Munde Monastery” for her Master’s thesis to contribute to the cultural enhancement of this place.
To achieve this goal, Selina browsed through many archives and bought and read books that were ‘somehow’ related to the topics of ‘Ikaria’ and ‘exile’.
As a result of this work, Selina created display boards as part of her Master’s thesis that explain the location of “Munde Monastery” with the aim of having them installed on site. However, as the legal process in order to obtain the necessary permissions has not yet been completed, the boards are still in storage, waiting for the day when they can help tourists better understand this historic site.
Munde Monastery, Christos Raches, (c) Birgit Urban
And now what? Selina asked herself this question once again. How could she now succeed in passing on all this knowledge, which she has been gathering for years, to others? The only way she could be allowed to offer tours was by getting licensed as a tourist guide as this is required by Greek law in order to prove your knowledge. Selina therefore decided to train as a tour guide. This was the missing piece of the puzzle. She enrolled at the ‘School for Tour Guides’ in Rhodes and left in 2022 as a certified tour guide.
Selina Kastania, Acropolis, Athens (c) Selina Kastania
Since then, Selina has been working with international tourist groups throughout Greece, trying to convey Greek history and culture to them in a contemporary way as possible. This means she travels a lot and has a regular income.
Despite all this, she continues to work intensively towards her goal of authentically conveying Ikaria—its culture, its history, its present – to the tourists coming to her island. To her understanding this might be more necessary than ever, as she has noticed in recent years that the marketing label “Blue Zone/longevity” has turned Ikaria into a hot spot for “fast tourism.” Every year in summer, the island is flooded with tourists who have only two goals: to participate in as many panagyria as possible in a short time and to observe the locals like supernatural beings and to get the secret formula for longevity, superficially and applicable at home that will help them live longer. For Selina, this completely misses the point of the culture and constitution of Ikarian society. For her, Ikaria is something much bigger and deeper. Something people coming from the outside to this rocky place cannot understand just by observing what the Ikarians eat and how they prepare these recipes, how much wine they drink, and how many hours they sleep. And certainly, tourists cannot immerse in the Ikarians’ philosophy of life by overindulging in the local wine, tearing off their T-shirt while dancing, and taking the lead position in the Ikariotiko for hours. In Selina’s opinion, this is a major misunderstanding of Ikarian culture.
And this is where Selina wants to start, by explaining the traditions that lie beneath the surface. Non-Ikarians cannot tell just by watching that the Ikariotiko, the well-known Ikarian dance, is an expression of the islanders’ deep democratic understanding. This traditional dance represents the basic understanding that Ikarians are equal, that everyone has the same opportunities. There is no distinction between different social groups on the island. Therefore, everyone dances together in this dance: different generations, the banker together with the fisherman. Anyone can lead the group at any time – whether a teenager or a grandfather. But: everyone must make room again so that someone else can exercise the right to lead.
Ikarian Panagyri at Platanos (c) ikariancenter.gr
For Selina, there are so many issues where she sees a discrepancy between the current “Blue Zone” marketing of her island and its reality. So, there is a wide field in which she wants to work. And the experiences of the last few days confirm that she is on the right track. Time and again, she could sense that her explanations of the connections between the Ikarian history and the present helped the group of students from America better understand why the rhythm on Ikaria is different, why the roads cannot and should not be expanded into wide highways, why the Ikarians have a frugal lifestyle, and why they (still largely) resist the American lifestyle.
Selina walks down the steps of the Archaeological Museum, gets into her car, and heads home. She still has to prepare the itinerary for the next group; she is looking forward to it, as the group has specifically requested a guided tour of the “Munde Monastery.” And that’s where she’s completely in her element.
Selina Kastania (c) Birgit Urban
(@Text and Pictures – Birgit Urban)