Walpurgis Night

The expatriate English musical group the Legendary Pink Dots has a song on their 1983 album "Curse" titled "Wall Purges Night," an obvious pun on Walpurgisnacht, with lyrical references to Nazism and rioting. In 1860, Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Sardinia became also the first King of Italy after conquering the rest of the peninsula. Adolf Hitler, with several members of his staff (including Joseph Goebbels), committed suicide on Walpurgisnacht, April 30/May 1, 1945. In 1792, Jean-Paul Marat, son of a Sardinian father from Cagliari and a Swiss mother, was one of the triumvirate leading the French Revolution. Anton Szandor LaVey chose Walpurgis Night in 1966 to found the Church of Satan. In 1718 Sardinia became an independent kingdom under the House of Savoy, rulers of Piedmont. The second act of Edward Albee's play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is entitled "Walpurgisnacht.". This was the first time Turks lost out to Europeans signaling a trend of military decline and defeats from which Turks never recovered.

In Sweden it is only the labour and socialist parties which use May 1 for political activities, while others observe the traditional festivities. The sight of the admiral's head on a spear put such a fear in the heart of the Turks, that they abandoned the fight and completely surrendered to Christians. This does not only include right-wing parties, but also others like the church have followed suit, marching and making speeches. On October 7, 1571, at the Battle of Lepanto, Sardinian mariners on Board the admiralship of Infante Don John of Austria, half brother of Felipe II, boarded the Turkish admiralship, overpowered the crew, and cut off the head of a Turkish admiral. Starting with the parties of the left, the whole of the Finnish political scene has nominated Vappu as the day to go out on stumps and agitate. Under Spain, Sardinians were regularly employed on the royal Spanish fleet. The Finnish tradition is also a shadowing of the Soviet Era May Day parade. After the merge of the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, Sardinia was incorporated into the newly created national entity, Spain.

The festivities also include a picnic on May 1st, which is sometimes prepared in a lavish manner. The native population of the city of Alghero (S'Alighera in Sardinian, L'Alguer in Catalan) was expelled and the city repopulated by the Catalan invaders, whose descendants spoke Catalan till quite recently. Often the magazine has been stuffed inside standard industrial packages such as sardine-cans and milk cartons. In 1323, the Kingdom of Aragon began a campaign to conquer Sardinia; the giudicato of Arborea successfully resisted this and for a time came to control nearly the entire island, but its last ruler Eleanor of Arborea, was eventually defeated by the Aragonese in the decisive Battle of Sanluri, June 30, 1409. Classic forms have included an Äpy printed on a toilet-roll and a bedsheet. At various times, these fell under the sway of Genoa and Pisa. Both are sophomoric; but while Julkku is a standard magazine, Äpy is always a gimmick. By 900, these districts had become four independent constitutional monarchies.

Fixtures include the capping of the Havis Amanda, a nude female statue in Helsinki, and the biannually alternating publications of ribald matter called Äpy and Julkku. To provide for local defense, he divided the island into four Giudicati, Gallura, Logudoro, Arborea, and Caralis. One tradition is drinking mead, whose alcohol content varies. Especially after the conquering of Sicily in 832, the Byzantines were unable to effectively defend their most distant province, and the provincial judge assumed independent authority. Many people who have graduated from lukio wears the cap. Beginning in the eighth century, Arabs and Berbers began raiding Sardinia. From the end of the 19th century, "Fin de Siècle", and onwards, this traditional upper class feast has been co-opted by students attending university, already having received their student cap. Byzantine rule was practically nonexistent in the mountainous Barbagia region in the eastern part of the island, and an independent kingdom persisted there from the sixth through ninth centuries.

The student traditions are also one of the main characteristics of "Vappu". Under the Byzantines, the imperial representative was a judge who governed from the southern city of Caralis. The celebration is typically centered on plentiful use of sparkling wine and other alcoholic beverages. From 456 - 534, Sardinia was a part of the short-lived kingdom of the Vandals in North Africa, until reconquered by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. Today in Finland, Walpurgis Night (Vapunaatto) is, along with New Year's Eve, the biggest carnival-style festivity taking place in the streets of Finland's towns and cities. In 238 BC, after being defeated by the Roman Republic during the First Punic War, Carthage ceded Sardinia to Rome. In Sweden, Valborg is especially notorious because of the excessive amounts of alcohol people consume on that very day. The settlers called for help from Carthage, and the island became a province in the Carthaginian Empire.

There are also newer student traditions like the carnival parade, the "Cortège", which has been held since 1910 by the students at Chalmers in Gothenburg. In 509 BC, war broke out between the native Nuragic people and the Phoenician settlers. The strongest and most traditional spring festivities are also found in the old university cities, like Uppsala and Lund where both current and graduated students gather at events that take up most of the day from early morning to late night on April 30, or "sista april" ("The last day of april") as most students of Lund call it. Beginning around 1000 BC, Phoenician mariners established several ports of trade on the Sardinian coast. Most of the songs are from the 19th century and were spread by the students' spring festivities. The density, extensiveness and sheer size of the architectural remains from the Neolithic period, points to a considerable population of the island. The tradition which is most spread throughout the country is probably singing songs of spring. Genetics has now shown that Sardinians are a pre-Indo-European population and, like Basque, different from all surrounding and much younger groups.

The expected reward for this task to be paid in eggs. However most theories regarding the original population of Sardinia have been formulated prior to genetics research and in the traditional frame of east-west movements. An older tradition from Southern Sweden was for the younger people to collect greens and branches from the woods at twilight, which were used to adorn the houses of the village. According to some linguistic studies, the town of Sardis in (Lydia) would have been their starting point from which they would have reached the Tyrrhenian Sea, dividing into what were to become the Sardinians and the Etruscans. One of the main traditions in Sweden is to light large bonfires, a custom which is most firmly established in Svealand, and which began in Uppland during the 18th century. This assertion holds some truth; in fact most of the tombe dei giganti have a tombstone shaped like a ship vertically dug into the ground, bearing witness to their sea traveling activities. The forms of celebration in Sweden vary in different parts of the country and between different cities. Shardana and Shekelesh were also called by the Egyptians as the "people from the faraway islands", implying that Shardana were already residents of Sardinia at the time of the Egyptian expedition.

Walpurgis is one of the main holidays during the year in both Sweden and Finland, alongside of Christmas and Midsummer. Shardana had joined the Shekelesh and others to form the coalition of the Sea Peoples, but were defeated by Ramses III around 1180 BC in Egypt. The phenomenon was first reported on the Brocken."
—Taken from Oxford Phrase & Fable. It is speculated that, among others, the Shardana people landed in Sardinia coming from the eastern Mediterranean. It is noted for the phenomenon of the Brocken spectre and for witches' revels which reputably took place there on Walpurgis night. The Brocken Spectre is a magnified shadow of an observer, typically surrounded by rainbow-like bands, thrown onto a bank of cloud in high mountain areas when the sun is low. Still today, more than 9,000 Nuraghe survive. "Walpurgis Night (in German folklore) the night of April 30 (May Day's eve), when witches meet on the Brocken mountain and hold revels with their Gods..."
"Brocken the highest of the Harz Mountains of north central Germany. From Neolithic times till the Roman Empire, the Nuragic civilisation took shape on the island.