See the Mysterious Winter Parade That Brings Tourists to the Remote Island of Sardinia

The first time Salvatore Gungui transformed into a Mamuthone, he was 14 years old.

He pulled on the traditional leather-soled shepherd’s boots, velvet pants and jacket and wrapped himself in a heavy cloak. Across his chest, he strapped a cluster of bells that weighed more than 60 pounds. He felt a strange mix of emotions as he paraded through the streets, a somber mask covering his face. “There was my grandpa, and my mama and papa, and also my uncle, and they were so proud,” recalls Gungui, more than four decades later. And yet, he adds, “It was a horrible day. I was tired and scared because it was such a long parade. I remember my feeling was, ‘I can’t do it anymore. I can’t, I can’t.’ But I carried on.” 

Behold the World’s Smallest Monkey: The Pygmy Marmoset

The parade of Mamuthones is an annual winter tradition in the Italian village of Mamoiada. The village of around 2,300 is in the heart of Sardinia, an Italian island about 175 miles from the mainland. (By comparison, Sicily is only two miles from the mainland.) While Italian is the island’s official language, Sardinians also speak a separate Latinate language that most Italians struggle to understand. In villages like Mamoiada, just about all the income is related to either agriculture or tourism. The parade of Mamuthones is one of the largest tourism draws of the entire year, even though it isn’t especially cheerful. “It’s a serious and, in some ways, sad carnival,” Gungui told me. “This is not like a theater for making people happy.”

If the phrase “Italian carnival” brings to mind a cast of playful characters—Harlequin with his multicolored diamonds, Pierrot with his oversized buttons, the Plague Doctor with his bird-like beak—you’re probably thinking of Venice. The first recorded carnival took place there in 1094. The festival had a Christian tie-in, as a burst of hedonism before the austerity of Lent. (The word “carnevale” means “taking out the meat,” implying one last decadent feast.) The celebration may also have older pagan roots. During the Roman festival of Saturnalia, ancestors of today’s Italians drank and indulged and turned the social order upside down. Masters served their slaves, and an elected “king” gave orders to everyone. Throughout the Middle Ages, carnivals popped up all over Europe and, later, spread across the ocean in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro. European Jews may well have been influenced by these pre-Lent festivals when they turned the late winter holiday of Purim into a night of costumes, theatrics and topsy-turvy hierarchies.

The festival of Mamuthones is not part of the same carnival tradition, though it has its own Christian association. It starts on the eve of January 17, the feast day of St. Anthony the Abbot, a legendary saint who had an austere life in the wilderness and lived to be 105. “But this is a pagan festival,” Gungui told me. “Everybody knows it has nothing to do with Christianity.” 

It’s unclear when the parade originated, or what the word “Mamuthone” even means. But the character itself has a distinct appearance. The most startling part of the costume is the mask, with its severe and labored expression. Another set of characters called Issohadores (literally, rope-bearers) march along with the Mamuthones, slinging lassos. The Issohadores wear a different mask—blankly white and unsmiling. 

In an email, Elena Giangiulio and Alice Medda, the scientific director and assistant director of Mamoiada’s Museum of Mediterranean Masks, explained that the parade belongs to a tradition of festivals that are “profoundly serious and solemn, unlike the modern carnival, which is lighthearted and fun.” There are other winter parades like this in villages throughout Europe. In the Portuguese Entrudo festival, the locals wear terrifying masks and chase people through the streets. In some German-speaking villages, people celebrate Krampusnacht, or the night of the Krampus, with a devil-like figure who roars at children and threatens to carry them away in his sack. Heavy, clanging cowbells are a theme at many of these events, all of which are less about merriment than “exorcising the forces of evil,” as the museum directors put it. The somber procession of the Mamuthones may have its roots in the Nuragic civilization, which began almost 4,000 years ago. 

In Venice, Rio and New Orleans, outlandish disguises give revelers a chance to flaunt their individuality. But in Mamoiada, there’s a striking uniformity as rows of Mamuthones and Issohadores parade together wearing the same two masks. Instead of upending the social order, the Sardinian carnival seems to reinforce it. “We feel like we’re in a trance,” Gungui told me. “We don’t look at the other people. It’s just about all of us together as a group.” 

[email protected]

See Full Bio