Silverio Scivoli was born in Carrara in the Tuscany region of Italy in 1948, but now he lives in Ilulissat, Greenland.

Silver and Maria in the Icefjord

In 1958, 10-year old Silverio was given an accordion by his father, who was later killed while working overtime at a marble quarry to earn the extra pennies to pay for Silverio’s music lessons.

Silverio stopped playing music, and he and his mother later moved to Parma. After a few years, it became obvious that Silverio was not cut out for school and he took a job at a large factory in Parma, where one of the local metalworkers was starting up a band. They needed a pianist and, when asked if he could read music, Silverio lied and answered YES!
He could only play by ear, but at the first rehearsal with the band, luck was with him. When he was handed the sheet music for the first number, it was a Beatles song he already knew by heart, and he was hired.

The Arrow
The band called itself The Arrow.
He played with the band for a few years and taught himself to play bass guitar. One evening in 1965, while he was on stage playing bass, the lead singer for one of Italy’s most famous pop groups, I Corvi, was in the room and on the lookout for a new bass player. He offered Silverio a job, which he accepted and, a year later, the band had a hit that went to the top of the Italian pop charts.
The band’s icon was a raven, which sat on Silverio’s shoulder and, when it died in 1967, so did the band. When things were going well, they earned quite a lot of money, but as things ended up, Silverio had to return to Parma without a cent in his pocket.
In 1968, he became a father for the first time and began to play dance music at the local nightclubs. With his second child, he was still playing dance music, but when his wife gave birth to his third son, Christian, he had already left her and was playing dance music in Austria.
His wife and his mother reported him to the police for criminal neglect of family. When he returned to Italy, he was arrested and thrown in jail among the rapists and hardened criminals.

A blond Dane
In 1979, while he was playing in Greece, he met a blond Dane named Marianne and, when he later visited her in Copenhagen, he received through a Danish impresario a job offer at the White Falcon Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland.
It was not unusual for the locals to get quite drunk, when there were mixes at the White Falcon Hotel and Rosa was, the first time Silverio met her. Nevertheless, he fell in love and it was the beginning of some rough and tumble years.
Four children were born in between the fights and alcohol-related conflicts, and a surprise visit with amorous intentions from the blond Dane Marianne became a comic and liberating intermezzo in the turbulent life of Silverio and Rosa in Ilulissat.
At the end of the 1980s, the family had a sheltered, constructive period during which Rosa stopped drinking for three years. However, when she began again, Silverio could not take any more. The family split up and they shared custody of the children.
And yet. There is a final chapter.
In 1993, Rosa was sober again and had apparently made a definitive break with her former dependency. Silverio was happy and wanted to try, one last time, to reunite the family.
They all traveled to Italy, but after a short time, there were once again problems not because of alcohol this time, for Rosa had put her drinking days behind her.
Now the problem was religion. Rosa became a Jehovah’s Witness, and not just a self-deprecating, unassuming, rank and file member but a fanatical Jehovah’s Witness. This time, the break was definitive!
Silverio still lives in Ilulissat with his oldest daughter, Monica, and has started a travel and adventure bureau. He kept up contact with Christian, his son from his first marriage in Italy, who visited him in Greenland a couple of times. Christian enlisted as a lifer in the Italian army and, at the end of the 1990s, was part of the UN peace-keeping forces in Albania, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Silverio was not comfortable with his sons military career and encouraged him to break his contract with the army and move to Ilulissat. In 1999, Christian did just that and took a job at his father’s tourist bureau.
In 2000, his girlfriend Sara, a native Green-lander, became pregnant and, in 2001, Sara and Christian presented Silverio with his first grandson, whom they christened Brian.
That same year, Silverio met Maria, also a native Greenlander, and they moved in together.
Despite the fact that he is still an Italian citizen, misses the sun, surf and fruit, he has no plans to leave Greenland.
He has an observation about Greenlanders that he wants noted for the record:
- When it comes to jealousy, they are like the Sicilians…