Fairy houses, in the heart of Sardinia
YiS Team: Annalisa Bucci
Tuesday, May 31st, 2022
An underground universe, camouflaged in the landscape of the Sardinian countryside. Over 3500 domus de Janas are scattered throughout the island, an expression of the funerary rites of people who lived five thousand years ago, and then reused in later periods. Using only stone pickaxes, these people dug and shaped the hard rock to create underground tombs where they laid the dead and ‘returned’ them to the Mother Goddess, a divinity attested to by the discovery of hundreds of votive statues.
The name of these ‘artificial’ caves derives from the ancient belief, spread by popular legends, that they were the homes of tiny fairies, the Janas, who wove golden threads in the moonlight and watched over children’s sleep. Sacredness and rituals drove the pre-Nuragic men to dig into the rock and decorate the ‘rooms’ that housed their loved ones, who ‘slept’ in the womb of mother Earth while waiting for the regenerative journey to the afterlife.
