Kalymnos: a tough road to paradise

Though you would not know it from the warm hospitality climbers find on the island, tourism has not figured large in the Kalymnians’ past. Tiny, rocky Kalymnos, one of the easternmost islands of Greece, has always been overlooked by island hoppers in favor of other islands that are more lush, hospitable, and wealthy.
The more rugged way of life on Kalymnos dates back over 3000 years, when Minoans, Cretans, and then Dorians inhabited the island. Lacking opportunities for agriculture, and strategically located near Asia Minor, ancient Kalymnians made a living as seamen and warriors. According to The Iliad, Kalymnos sent 30 ships to the Trojan War in 1200 BC.
Throughout the ages, the fate of Kalymnos has been tied to nearby Kos, a famously rich island in ancient times, visible to the south from the shores of Kalymnos. Kalymnians took goods from the richer and more fertile island in exchange for helping to protect Kos from the ravages of pirates and would-be invaders. In one ancient battle (the resulting legal case was studied by Julius Ceasar when he was a law student), Kalymnians destroyed a dangerous pirate fleet off Cape Krikelo on Kos, but the governors of Kos shortchanged the Kalymnians, beginning an enmity that has existed between the two islands ever since.
Kalymnos was aligned with Alexander the Great, and later became part of the Roman Empire. Though the region flourished in Byzantine times, it was frequently attacked by Arabs and Turks, and by the 11th century, prosperity had been replaced by hardship from constant piracy.
In 1204, Venetians conquered Kos, followed a century later the Knights of Saint John, but in 1522 the Turks finally took the region and controlled it until the 20th century.
Coinciding with the arrival of the Turks, the Kalymnians began to specialize in another grueling and dangerous profession: sponge fishing. Though the sponge industry has now all but died, Kalymnos gained great and lasting fame as “the sponge fishing island.” The arduous, hypoxic work of stripping the fibrous sponges from submerged rocks at depths up to thirty meters claimed the life of many a free diver. In the 19th century, the profession took on a more sinister industrial character, as Kalymnians unwittingly did trial-and-error R&D on the new helmeted deep-sea diving suits, resulting in the early case studies in the crippling and fatal effects of the bends. As local opportunities declined, Kalymnian fishermen worked as far afield as Africa and Key West; the town of Tarpon Springs, Florida, is composed largely of Kalymnian descendants who once worked the sponge trade, and the town was known in the 1930s as the sponge capital of the world.
Kalymnos, like all the Dodecanese islands, is thoroughly Greek, and participated in the Greek Revolution in 1821, but the London Protocol of 1830 did not include it inside the boundaries of the Greek state, leaving it to the Turks. Such hard luck — and the toughness that comes with it — have deeply influenced the local character. Kalymnians have been in the forefront of every struggle, winning decisive battles over the centuries, yet in peacetime they have been the first to be traded away by diplomats.
The Turkish occupation lasted until 1912, when the Italians invaded, but the initial promise of liberation soon gave way to an even harsher occupation as fascism took over in Italy. In the 1920s, Mussolini’s vision of a new Roman empire spread to the Dodecanese, though as with all eras of history, these cultural currents left almost no architectural imprint on the desolate, rocky island, or changed its tough inhabitants. Despite the richness of events, there are almost no ancient ruins or early architecture on Kalymnos; for these you must visit Kos.
The Fascist and Nazi domination of the 1930s and 1940s fell hard on the island, but one famous show of Kalymnian character came in April 1935, at a time when the Vatican was trying to pull the Dodecanese islands away from the Greek Orthodox Church and military and religious matters were thoroughly entangled. Trying to protect their local priest while their men were elsewhere engaged, 2000 women and children of Kalymnos entered into a three-day battle against Italian troops, armed only with kitchen utensils and stones. Early in the confrontation, one nun snatched a rifle from a soldier’s hands and broke the bayonette blade over her knee. In the struggle, six Italians were thrown into the sea by the mob of women, but to the credit of the occupying army, no Kalymnians were killed and the Italians finally quelled the rebellion. This colorful act of heroism, however, gained wide notice and helped turn the political tides, saving the religious freedom of the Dodecanese until the region finally gained independence at the end of World War II.
With the overfishing produced by dive suits and industrial methods, the sponge-fishing industry on Kalymnos dwindled, and the Mediterranean sponge blight of the 1980s finished it off as a viable industry on the island. Hard times once again fell on the Kalymnians. In the mid 1990s, as sun-loving climbers fanned out from larger Mediterranean islands like Mallorca, Sardinia, and Crete into more obscure locales, rock climbers chanced upon Kalymnos.
First were the well-known Italian rock climber Andrea Di Bari and his wife, who discovered the island in the summer of 1996. Andrea returned twice the next year with photographer Andrea Gallo and others, opening about 50 routes on the Arhi, Odyssey, and Poets sectors. The first Grande Grotta route, Aegialis, was put up in 1998 by Greek climbers George Kopalides and John Torelli. Italian climbers established the Jurassic Park sector the next year, Germans established the megaclassic Marci Marc (and the open project Lucky Luca) in 2000, and the Swiss contributed most of the superb Spartacus sector in 2002. Di Bari and Gallo published the first article about Kalymnos climbing, in the April 1999 issue of Alp magazine, and a climbing festival took place the next year. The island now has over 600 routes.
Kalyminans have long been independent, a bit iconoclastic, more at home among rock and sea than polite company and wealth. They are fiercely traditional and ill at ease with normal tourism, but quick to find commonality with adventurers and outcasts, a tendency that makes the island deeply amenable to climbers. The recent influx of climbing tourism is thus an odd but promising development for the island’s economy. “These rocks have been a curse to the island for centuries,” Kalymnians will tell you incredulously, “and now they are our blessing.”