Li Flama de San Lorenz

The bonfires of St. Lawrence - in the local dialect "li flama de San Lorenz" - will be repeated again this year.

It is one of the historical traditions of the small village of Oga, to which the local people are particularly attached. The typical night bonfires (and in particular the

big bonfire placed on the natural balcony of Tadé at 1900 meters above sea level) are accessed at various points in the village and on the slopes of Mount San Colombano.

Since time immemorial, the villagers have been engaged in collecting considerable stacks of wood that are then burned in one go, creating in the whole a grandiose and fascinating effect. In local tradition it seems to evoke the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, patron saint of the village, who was burned alive on a gridiron. Most likely, however, the tradition of the majestic Tadé flama, jealously guarded by the youth of Oga, is reminiscent of the pagan rite that anciently concluded the harvest of the crops, a rite of regeneration of nature after a vegetative cycle. As for the smaller bonfires that are lit in the village, they are perhaps an echo of the burning of the last sheaf that, in times past, was burned at the end of the harvest to scatter the resulting ashes for the purpose of increasing the fertility of the fields.

As every year, the teenagers who until the previous year undertook to prepare the bonfires near the village, have also achieved with age an autonomy of their own: that is why they detach themselves from the adults who followed them in past years and - alone - undertake to make and light the bonfires placed at higher altitudes.

This detachment, this empowerment, is also part of the Ogolina tradition: to represent the approach to adulthood.

They - teenagers - who have taken to higher altitudes, will be taken over for the preparation of the bonfires close to the village by other children and young people from the village, to carry on a beautiful, evocative tradition unconsciously linked to archaic and pagan rituals.

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