In Oliena, Easter Sunday—just as always—begins with gunfire. Dressed in traditional costumes preserved here since the Renaissance, the shooters line up along the railing of the lower parish church of the Virgin Mary and fire off blank shots one after another, creating a literally deafening yet somehow harmonious acoustic setting for the highlight of the feast: s’incontru, the ritual of the meeting. From one side comes the risen Christ, from the other the statue of the Virgin Mary; both are carried into the main square, strewn with rosemary and lavender, where Christ bows before his mother.
The floor of the small medieval church of Santa Croce is also covered with lavender. This is where the procession of the risen Christ will set off from. Around nine in the morning it still stands empty. Only towards ten does the core of the procession arrive—the cross, the banners of the confraternities, and the statue itself, which is placed on the table at the center. While waiting for the rest of the participants, those already there chat, take selfies, and offer cakes and wine. You can tell the local winegrowers have saved their very best homemade bottles for the occasion.
Then the procession slowly turns out of the chapel: the cross in front, followed by the banners, and finally the statue is lifted, with a long line of the faithful trailing behind.
At the end of the street opening onto the main square, they stop, waiting for the procession of the Virgin Mary to arrive from the opposite side. Between the two, the carpet of lavender is already surrounded by men and women in traditional dress, forming a corridor through which the two statues enter and meet. Behind them gathers the village and its visitors. For the second time now, I come across Hungarians among them—and all of them say they were drawn here by the Wang River’s earlier Easter Sunday reports.
At a central signal, the procession suddenly surges forward, entering the main square between the two lines. I should have secured a good spot in time behind the corridor to film the meeting of Christ and his mother up close. From here, all that can be made out is the distant movement of the two statues amid the festive crowd—and the exact moment of their encounter is marked by a thunderous volley of shots fired from the church railing.
Then the procession starts moving up the main street, escorted in double file as the statues and flags are carried up to the upper main square and the church of Saint Ignatius for the Easter high mass.
The procession is closed by a four-member family whose costume is very different from the others. “Why so different?” I ask them. It turns out they came from Samugheo on the western side of the island, because the mother is originally from here but married there, and they wear the local traditional dress. It is astonishing how this richness of clothing and jewellery—seen here in a single village—exists in a different form in every village of the island.
Whoever manages to get inside the church listens to the mass; those who cannot stay outside on the main street and live the social life in the bars with prosecco and red wine on offer, or with circulated homemade wines and cakes. Those who have come home for the feast meet the locals, photograph newborns, and marvel at how much the children have grown. The children have their own social life, charmingly adult-like: they chase the drifting balloons and practice the steps for the post-mass circle dance.
It is hopeless to get to the bar counters, so I go down to the lower-square pub for a beer. The pub is filled with the shooters from the morning ceremony. As I order my beer at the counter, the shooter next to me immediately tells the waitress that he will pay for it. I shake his hand and we start talking. He explains that two years ago they reorganised the increasingly anarchic shooting tradition into a new framework, creating the “S’Incontru” Civil Association of Oliena Shooters. They take photos of themselves; I will send them the pictures in the evening.
When I return to the upper main square, the children are already sitting in rows around the dance area. As the crowd pours out of the church, everyone comes down here. The accordion starts playing, and the dancing begins. The first one or two circle dances are done by the children, then gradually separate circles form for the adults in traditional dress, and later for the villagers in everyday clothes as well.
Around one o’clock, people begin to drift away, giving in to the call of lunch. In the lower square, everyone picks up a few sprigs of lavender and rosemary. They tell us that once these have dried, they are to be burned on the eve of St. John’s Day, and the ashes are used to make the sign of the cross three times.
We just manage to catch a “secret” procession as it carries the statue of the Virgin Mary and the flags back from the main church to their original chapel. The everyday rhythms of life are beginning to reassert themselves.
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