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According to Sardinian legend, after God created the Earth, He
gathered all the leftover pieces from everywhere else, threw
them in the sea and stepped on them to create Sardinia or, as the
Greeks called it, Ichnusa, meaning ‘footprint’. Since then, the island
has been walked on by anyone who has ever sailed through the
Mediterranean. Invaded in name but never conquered in spirit,
Sardinia has managed the clever trick of absorbing a cultural
buffet of influences while holding its head high with a resolutely
independent pride.
Lying 178 km from the nearest mainland, slightly closer
to Tunisia than Italy, no other island is as marooned in the
Mediterranean as Sardinia; a fact that has shaped the island’s
unique character. Although the Sardinians, or Sardi, have adopted
the Italian tongue of their latest landlords, they cling fiercely to
their native language, Sardo, and are recognized as a distinct
ethnic group from their mainland countrymen, who drop anchor
in droves each summer to splash around the island’s beaches.
Sardinia boasts the Romanesque churches, mosaics, medieval
castles and fine wines associated with Italy but also pulsates with
an unsullied and unscripted spirit that the mainland lost long ago.
