Cimmeria (Calvino)

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Cimmeria is a fictional country in Italo Calvino's novel If on a Winters Night a Traveler. The country is described as having existed as an independent state between World War I and World War II. The capital is Örkko, and its principal resources are peat and by-products, bitumonous compounds. It seems to have been located somewhere on the Gulf of Bothnia. The country has since been absorbed, and its people and language, of the 'Bothno-Ugaric' group, have both disappeared. as Calvino concludes the alleged, fictional encyclopedia entry concerning Cimmeria: "In successive territorial divisions between her powerful neighbors the young nation was soon erased from the map; the autochthonous population was dispersed; Cimmerian language and culture had no development (If on a Winters Night a Traveler, pp.44-45)"