Legend and History of Serifos island

An island of strong contrasts with an active magnetic field created by its metalliferous rocks, its an ideal proposal for relaxed holidays in a clearly Cycladic environment or for intense nightlife, which captivates you at first sight.

LEGEND AND HISTORY

Serifos, a rock made of iron rooted in the middle of the sea, was known for its ore deposits from the ancient times. It was inhabited by the Boeotians, 3000 years ago, having Diktis and Polydektis as kings, and flourished so much that it had had, since the 6th century B.C. its own currency. This is where Perseas was born, the legendary son of Zeus and Danae, the only daughter of Acrisius, the King of Argos, who, being afraid of a prophecy given by the Delfoi oracle that his grandson will kill him, first locked her in the basement of the palace and, then, when Zeus left her with a child by appearing before her in the form of golden rain, put the mother and the child in a box and threw them at sea; the gentle waves of the Aegean Sea led it to Serifos. Perseas, once he became an adult, wanting to release his mother from the suffocating courtship of Polydektis, wore the winged sandals and by holding the mirroring shield of Goddess Athena, cut off the head of Medusa, the dreadful monster that turn into stone anyone who looked at it; the blood of Medusa inseminated Earth to give birth to Pegasus, the winged horse that was reasonably regarded by many as an offspring of Serifos. Perseus showed the head of Medusa to the conniving King Polydektis, turning him into stone and made the doting Diktis king of the island and husband of Danae.

Odysseus has also visited this island when returning to Ithaca, according to the legend, but he did not have a good time in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, who sent him off by targeting his ship with a rock outside the Koutalas cove. Today, there are still remnants of Cyclopean walls overlooking the Aegean Sea.
In the misty period between legend and history, Minoans from Crete and Myceneans inhabited the island and started the exploitation of its mines (Moutoulas Galani). However, in the Achaeans’ crusade against Troy, the island is totally absent, since Homer does not cite it in the list of the one hundred ships constituting the greatest armada of that time, perhaps because it had taken sides with the Trojans and the Achaeans had destroyed or subjugated it before leaving for Troy.n the historic years, in the mid-7th century B.C., the island becomes a colony of the Ionians from Athens, headed by Eteoklis, who transplanted in the island the seed of democracy that established and brought great prosperity to the island.
Later, Serifos participates, indirectly, in the crusade of Alexander the Great for the acculturation of Asia, since his and his “partners’” swords were made of Serifos’s iron. There are still remnants of the casting facilities of that time, irrefutable witnesses, in Avessalos.

Following the Hellenistic period, Serifos is left in the margin, forgotten by everyone, even by the Turks (who only collected taxes from the island, without inhabiting it), except for the pirates who visited it regularly. The need to protect the island from their fierce attacks has given Chora, the main settlement of the island, its particular morphology, with the white houses clung one next to the other, in a perfect cycle embracing the steep crest of the hill and creating an impregnable pearly castle. The fortification was completed by the 6 heavy gates («loggias») with embrasures in the perimeter, bolted throughout the night, two of which remain today.

In the second half of the 19th century, Greece is possessed by a delirium for excavations and Serifos comes again into the foreground with the intensive exploitation of its bowels by the Gromans family that has left behind it a series of dramatic images: drifts – wounds on the body of the hard rock carved with pickaxes and sweat, rough stairs made of stone leading down to the blue sea and, on them, impudent, robust iron constructions – mirrors of their time; the Command Post at Mega Livadi, one of the most beautiful samples of neoclassical architecture and an ark of technology in the Aegean Sea is the ornament of the island.

Here, in August 1916, the first eight-hour employment agreement is signed with the blood of mine workers (with a great participation of women) and gendarmes, when the mine slaves form a society, on the initiative of their compatriot, Konstantinos Speras, who had lived abroad and had just returned to the island, in the first labour struggle of the twentieth century in Greece.

After World War Two, the international markets open, the third countries compete intensely with each other on the price of minerals and they gradually make the mining of any iron ore left from the extortionate exploitation by the Gromans uneconomic. Production drops and the mines finally close in 1963. Grass and shrubs cover the trails and the wagons fall prey to the time, some of them standing upside and some others turned over in an actually theatrical scene outside Mega Livadi that is almost depopulated. Thousands of mine workers leave the island that turns from a primary production site to a location providing high quality services.