Nowhere established. Ancient tradition associates it with the Aeolian islands north of Sicily, and the poem describes a floating island ringed with bronze, which is not a description of anywhere.

Can the nine days be used to measure distance?

Only if the wanderings are a real itinerary, which is the question. Nine days at typical Bronze Age sailing speeds would cover most of the central Mediterranean.

All episodes

Aeolus and the bag of winds

Odyssey 10.1–79Odyssey

The cruellest episode in the poem: Ithaca is in sight, the crew open the bag their captain has guarded for nine days, and the winds blow them all the way back.

In the poem

Aeolus, keeper of the winds, entertains Odysseus for a month and sends him off with a leather bag containing every wind but the west. Odysseus steers for nine days and nights without sleeping. On the tenth, with the fires of Ithaca visible, he sleeps and the crew — certain the bag holds gold — open it.

They are blown back to Aeolia. This time Aeolus refuses them: a man so hated by the gods is not to be helped. It is the poem's clearest statement that the return is not a navigational problem.

Why it matters for the atlas

It is the geometric centre of the wanderings and the point where the atlas's confidence is lowest: a nine-day sail from an unlocated island brings Ithaca into view, and the poem never says in which direction.

Competing theories

The Aeolian islands
Proposed by: Thucydides 3.88; Strabo 6.2 · Antiquity
Speculative
The islands bear the name and antiquity made the link early. Which way the naming ran — poem to islands or islands to poem — is the unresolved question.
Aeolia
- Primary textThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 3.88
- Primary textStrabo, Geography 6.2

What is disputed

Whether the Aeolian islands were named for the Homeric Aeolus or vice versa, and whether the nine-day interval can be used as evidence of distance at all.

Questions

Where is Aeolia?: Nowhere established. Ancient tradition associates it with the Aeolian islands north of Sicily, and the poem describes a floating island ringed with bronze, which is not a description of anywhere.
Can the nine days be used to measure distance?: Only if the wanderings are a real itinerary, which is the question. Nine days at typical Bronze Age sailing speeds would cover most of the central Mediterranean.

Sources

Primary textHomer, Odyssey (trans. A. T. Murray, Loeb, 1919)
Primary textThucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 3.88
Primary textStrabo, Geography 6.2