The Interconnectedness of Things

It would seem that Vigo has been photographed from space and caused a whole lot of Internet activity. A Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi, floating about up there in space courtesy of the Japanese equivalent of NASA, whiles away his spare time taking pictures and putting them on the internet via Twitter. The Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, the Pyramids, the Seychelles, all sorts of places are indeed visible from space.

And then the other day he photographed a place he didn’t recognise and Twittered a query: «Name this city in Europe!» Thousands of surfers got involved; some people thought it was Istanbul while others suggested Montenegro. Finally someone recognised the Rande Bridge and the Citroen works – Vigo!!!

It was lucky he took the photo when he did. Today he would just get a load of clouds. And now today there is huge activity on Facebook as lots of people suggest that Soichi Noguchi should be made an adoptive son of the city. After all in the space of 24 hours he has got 25000 people to look at a picture of Vigo and its ría.

Meanwhile, back here down on the ground, I am in the middle of reading a historical novel called La Reina Sin Nombre, The Unnamed Queen, by Maria Gudin. Set in sixth century Northwest Spain it describes a society where people live in settlements called castros. Now that sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? They’ve only recently finished restoring the settlement up at the Castro Park here in Vigo and opened it to the public.

La Reina Sin Nombre is an interesting tale of druids, a mysterious magical cup (cf. King Arthur, Holy Grail and so on), invasions, power struggles and a young girl who doesn’t belong and doesn’t know her origins but who will undoubtedly turn out to be last in line for a throne somewhere.

What made me sit up and take notice was the fact that biggest “city” in the story is called Albión. Well, I always understood that Albion was an old name for Britain so I went and Googled it and found I was right. Wikipedia tells us: Albion (Greek: Ἀλβιών) is the oldest known name of the island of Great Britain. It is thought to derive from the white cliffs of Dover. Think of the football teams who have Albion as part of their name.

I also found a source that told me about a village near Ribadavia called Bretoña which was the seat of a large British settlement in the post-Roman period. Not only that, but the people living to the east of Bretoña in ancient times were called the Albiones. Apparently when various waves of invasions pushed the Celtic people of Britain into Scotland and Wales, some of them took to their boats and fled. Guess where they are supposed to have ended up. Yes, you’ve got it: Galicia. So the “Celtic” connection according to this theory is not just via Wales and Ireland but the original “English” before they became Anglo-Saxons. Small world isn’t it?