| Thule | |
|---|---|
| On the Ocean location | |
 Thule asTile on theCarta marina of 1539 byOlaus Magnus, where it is shown located to the northwest of the Orkney islands, with a "monster, seen in 1537", a whale ("balena"), and anorca nearby. | |
| Created by | Pytheas |
| Genre | Classical literature |
| In-universe information | |
| Type | Unidentified historical island |
Thule (/ˈθjuːliː/[1]Ancient Greek:Θούλη,romanized: Thúlē;Latin:Thūlē also spelled asThylē[2]) is the most northerly location mentioned inancient Greek andRoman literature andcartography. First written of by the Greek explorerPytheas ofMassalia (modern-dayMarseille, France) in about 320 BC, it was often described by later writers as an island north ofIreland or Britain. Modern interpretations have includedOrkney,Shetland,Northern Scotland, theFaroe Islands, andIceland. Other potential locations are the island ofSaaremaa (Ösel) in Estonia,[3][4] or the Norwegian island ofSmøla.[5]
Inclassical andmedieval literature,ultima Thule (Latin "farthest Thule") acquired ametaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world".[6] By theLate Middle Ages and theearly modern period, the Greco-Roman Thule was often identified with the real Iceland orGreenland. SometimesUltima Thule was a Latin name for Greenland, whenThule was used for Iceland. By the 19th century, however,Thule was frequently identified with Norway, Denmark, the whole ofScandinavia, one of the largerScottish islands, the Faroes, or several of those locations.[7][8]
Thule formerly gave its name to real places. In 1910, the explorerKnud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post in north-western Greenland, which he named "Thule". It later gave its name to the northernmostUnited States Air Force base, Thule Air Base, in northwest Greenland. With the transfer of the base to theUnited States Space Force, its name was changed toPituffik Space Base on April 6, 2023.
TheGreek explorerPytheas of the Greek city ofMassalia (nowMarseille, France) is the first to have written of Thule, after his travels between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas mentioned going to Thule in his nowlost work,On The Ocean Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦa (Ta peri tou Okeanou).L. Sprague de Camp wrote that "the city of Massalia... sent Pytheas to scout northern Europe to see where their trade-goods were coming from."[9] Descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in the works of later, often skeptical, authors.Polybius in his workThe Histories (c. 140 BC), Book XXXIV, cites Pytheas as one "who has led many people into error by saying that he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, giving the island a circumference of forty thousandstadia, and telling us also about Thule, those regions in which there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but a sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of ajellyfish in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak."[10]
The first century BC Greek astronomerGeminus of Rhodes claimed that the name Thule went back to an archaic word for thepolar night phenomenon – "the place where the sun goes to rest".[11]Dionysius Periegetes in hisDe situ habitabilis orbis also touched upon this subject,[12] as didMartianus Capella.[13]Avienius in hisOra Maritima added that during the summer on Thule night lasted only two hours, a clear reference to themidnight sun.[14]
Strabo, in hisGeographica (c. AD 30),[15] mentions Thule in describingEratosthenes' calculation of "the breadth of the inhabited world" and notes that Pytheas says it "is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea". But he then doubts this claim, writing that Pytheas has "been found, upon scrutiny, to be an arch falsifier, but the men who have seen Britain and Ireland do not mention Thule, though they speak of other islands, small ones, about Britain". Strabo adds the following in Book 5:
"Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic Circle. But from the other writers I learn nothing on the subject – neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes theArctic Circle."[16]
Strabo ultimately concludes,[17] "Concerning Thule, our historical information is still more uncertain, on account of its outside position; for Thule, of all the countries that are named, is set farthest north." The inhabitants or people of Thule are described in most detail by Strabo (citing Pytheas):
"the people (of Thule) live on millet and other herbs, and on fruits and roots; and where there are grain and honey, the people get their beverage, also, from them. As for the grain, he says, since they have no pure sunshine, they pound it out in large storehouses, after first gathering in the ears thither; for the threshing floors become useless because of this lack of sunshine and because of the rains".[18]
The mid-first century Roman geographerPomponius Mela placed Thule north ofScythia.[19]
In AD 77,Pliny the Elder published hisNatural History in which he also cites Pytheas' claim (in Book II, Chapter 75) that Thule is a six-day sail north of Britain. Then, when discussing the islands around Britain,[17] he writes:
"The farthest of all, which are known and spoke of, is Thule; in which there be no nights at all, as we have declared, about mid-summer, namely when the Sun passes through the sign Cancer; and contrariwise no days in mid-winter: and each of these times they suppose, do last six months, all day, or all night."
Finally, in refining the island's location, he places it along the most northerly parallel of those he describes: "Last of all is the Scythian parallel, from the Rhiphean hills into Thule: wherein (as we said) it is day and night continually by turns (for six months)."[20]
Cleomedes referenced Pytheas' journey to Thule, but added no new information.[21]
The Roman poetSilius Italicus (AD 25 – 101) wrote that the people of Thule were painted blue: "the blue-painted native of Thule, when he fights, drives around the close-packed ranks in his scythe-bearing chariot",[22] implying a link to thePicts (whoseexonym is derived from the Latinpictus "painted").Martial (AD 40 – 104) talks about "blue" and "painted Britons",[23] just likeJulius Caesar.[24]Claudian (AD 370 – 404) also believed that the inhabitants of Thule were Picts.[25]
The Roman historianTacitus, in his book chronicling the life of his father-in-law,Agricola, describes how the Romans knew that Britain (in which Agricola was Roman commander) was an island rather than a continent, by circumnavigating it. Tacitus writes of a Roman ship visiting Orkney and claims the ship's crew even sighted Thule. However their orders were not to explore there, as winter was at hand.[26] Some scholars believe that Tacitus was referring toShetland.
The third-century Latin grammarianGaius Julius Solinus wrote in hisPolyhistor that "Thyle, which was distant from Orkney by a voyage of five days and nights, was fruitful and abundant in the lasting yield of its crops".[27] The fourth-century Virgilian commentatorServius also believed that Thule sat close to Orkney:
"Thule; an island in the Ocean between the northern and western zone, beyond Britain, near Orkney and Ireland; in this Thule, when the sun is in Cancer, it is said that there are perpetual days without nights..."[28]
Other late classical writers such asOrosius (384–420) describe Thule as being north and west of both Ireland and Britain, strongly suggesting that it was Iceland.
Solinus (d. AD 400) in hisPolyhistor, repeated these descriptions, noting that the people of Thule had a fertile land where they grew a good production of crop and fruits.[29]
Early in the fifth century ADClaudian, in his poem,On the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius,Book VIII, rhapsodizes on the conquests of the emperorTheodosius I, declaring that theOrcades "ran red withSaxon slaughter; Thule was warm with the blood ofPicts; ice-boundHibernia [Ireland] wept for the heaps of slainScots". This implies that Thule wasScotland. But inAgainst Rufinias, theSecond Poem, Claudian writes of "Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star".Jordanes in hisGetica also wrote that Thule sat under thepole star.[30]
In the writings of the historianProcopius, from the first half of the sixth century, Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by 25 tribes. It is believed that Procopius is really talking about a part ofScandinavia, since several tribes are easily identified, including theGeats (Gautoi) in present-day Sweden and theSami people (Scrithiphini). He also writes that when theHerules returned, they passed theWarini and theDanes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. Procopius's Thule is believed to be the same place asScandza, as described byJordanes. Procopius says its inhabitants are pagans who practice human sacrifice.[31] According to Procopius, the sun doesn't rise for forty days around the time of the winter solstice in Thule. After the winter solstice, the people of Thule send men to the mountaintops, and when they first glimpse the sun above the horizon, they send word to the people in the valleys below. On hearing the good news, the people of Thule then celebrate their greatest festival.[32]
In the early seventh century,Isidore of Seville wrote in hisEtymologies that:
Ultima Thule (Thyle ultima) is an island of the Ocean in the northwestern region, beyond Britannia, taking its name from the sun, because there the sun makes its summer solstice, and there is no daylight beyond (ultra) this. Hence its sea is sluggish and frozen.[33]
Isidore distinguished this from the islands of Britannia, Thanet (Tanatos), the Orkney (Orcades), and Ireland (Scotia orHibernia).[33] Isidore was to have a large influence uponBede,[34] who was later to mention Thule.The Irish monkDicuil in his "Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae" (written circa 825) after quoting various classical sources describing Thule, says
"It is now thirty years since clerics, who had lived on the island from the first of February to the first of August, told me that not only at the summer solstice, but in the days round about it, the sun setting in the evening hides itself as though behind a small hill in such a way that there was no darkness in that very small space of time, and a man could do whatever he wished as though the sun were there, even remove lice from his shirt, and if they had been on a mountain-top perhaps the sun would never have been hidden from them. In the middle of that moment of time it is midnight at the equator, and thus, on the contrary, I think that at the winter solstice and for a few days about it dawn appears only for the smallest space at Thule, when it is noon at the equator. Therefore those authors are wrong and give wrong information, who have written that the sea will be solid about Thule, and that day without night continues right through from the vernal to the autumnal equinox, and that vice versa night continues uninterrupted from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, since these men voyaged at the natural time of great cold, and entered the island and remaining on it had day and night alternately except for the period of the solstice. But one day's sail north of that they did find the sea frozen over. There are many other islands in the ocean to the north of Britain which can be reached from the northern islands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and nights with sails filled with a continuously favourable wind. A devout priest told me that in two summer days and the intervening night he sailed in a two-benched boat and entered one of them. There is another set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for nearly a hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. But just as they were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northman pirates they are emptied of anchorites, and filled with countless sheep and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds. I have never found these islands mentioned in the authorities".
A map of the world voyage done by Sir Francis Drake in 1577–1580 shows Thule (Tile/Tule) as what is likely modern Iceland near Greenland.[35]
The British surveyorCharles Vallancey (1731–1812) was one of many antiquarians to argue thatIreland was Thule, as he does in his bookAn essay on the antiquity of the Irish language.[36] Scottish historianW.F. Skene identified Thule asKintyre peninsula in 1876 based upon a description given by Solinus.[37]
Another hypothesis, first proposed byLennart Meri in 1976, holds that the island ofSaaremaa (which is often known by theexonym Ösel) inEstonia, could be Thule. That is, there is a phonological similarity between Thule and theroottule- "of fire" inEstonian (and otherFinnic languages). Acrater lake namedKaali on the island appears to have been formed by ameteor strike in prehistory.[3][4][38] This meteor strike is often linked to Estonian folklore which has it that Saaremaa was a place where the sun at one point "went to rest".
Nazi Germany leadership considered Iceland to be the Thule area and the birthplace of the ancientAryan race, with senior Nazi leaderHeinrich Himmler even sendingan expedition team to Iceland in 1938 with hopes of finding a temple for Nordic gods likeThor andOdin.[39]
In 2010, scientists from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science atTechnische Universität Berlin claimed to have identified persistent errors in calculation that had occurred in attempts by modern geographers to superimposegeographic coordinate systems upon Ptolemaic maps. After correcting for these errors, the scientists claimed, Ptolemy's Thule could be mapped to the Norwegian island ofSmøla.[5]
In 1775, during his second voyage,Captain Cook named an island in the high southern latitudes of theSouth Atlantic Ocean,Southern Thule. The name is now used for a group of three southernmost islands in theSouth Sandwich Islands, one of which is calledThule Island. The island group became aBritish overseas territory of theUnited Kingdom, albeit also claimed byArgentina (in SpanishIslas Tule del Sur). The Southern Thule islands were occupied by Argentina in 1976. The occupation was not militarily contested by the British until the 1982Falklands War, during which time British sovereignty was restored by a contingent ofRoyal Marines. Currently the three islands are uninhabited.
In 1910, the explorerKnud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post, which he namedThule (Inuit:Avannaa) on Greenland. TheThule people, the predecessor of modernInuitGreenlanders, were named after the Thule region. In 1953, Avannaa becameThule Air Base, operated byUnited States Air Force. The population was forced to resettle toNew Thule (Qaanaaq), 110 kilometres (67 mi) to the north (76°31′50.21″N68°42′36.13″W / 76.5306139°N 68.7100361°W /76.5306139; -68.7100361 only 840NM from theNorth Pole).[40] TheScottish Gaelic forIceland isInnis Tile, which literally means the "Isle of Thule".[41]
Thule lends its name to the 69th element in theperiodic table,thulium.
Ultima Thule is the name of a location in theMammoth Cave system in Kentucky, United States. It was formerly the terminus of the known-explorable southeastern (upstream) end of the passage called "Main Cave", before discoveries made in 1908 by Ed Bishop andMax Kaemper showed an area accessible beyond it, now the location of theViolet City Entrance. The Violet City Lantern tour offered at the cave passes through Ultima Thule near the conclusion of the route.
In March 2018, following a naming competition, theKuiper belt object486958 Arrokoth, a fly-by target of theNASA probeNew Horizons, was nicknamed "Ultima Thule". The fly-by took place on 1 January 2019, and was the most distant encounter between a spacecraft and a planetary body. An official name for the body has since been assigned by theInternational Astronomical Union.[42][43]
In the metaphorical sense of a far-off land or an unattainable goal,Virgil coined the termUltima Thule (Georgics, 1. 30) meaning "farthermost Thule".[44]
Seneca the Younger writes of a day when new lands will be discovered past Thule.[45] This was later quoted widely in the context ofChristopher Columbus' voyages.[citation needed]
A work of prose fiction in Greek byAntonius Diogenes entitledThe Wonders Beyond Thule appeared c. AD 150 or earlier. (Gerald N. Sandy, in the introduction to his translation ofPhotius' ninth century summary of the work,[46]notes that this Thule most closely matches Iceland.)
The "known world' of the Europeans came to be viewed as bounded in the east by India and in the west by Thule, as expressed in theConsolation of Philosophy (III, 203 = metrus V, v. 7) byBoethius. "For though the earth, as far as India's shore, tremble before the laws you give, though Thule bow to your service on earth's farthest bounds, yet if thou canst not drive away black cares, if thou canst not put to flight complaints, then is no true power thine."[47]
By theLate Middle Ages, scholars were linking Iceland and/or Greenland to the name Thule and/or places reported by the Irish marinerSaint Brendan (in the 6th century) and other distant or mythical locations, such asHy Brasil andCockaigne. These scholars included works byDicuil (see above), theAnglo-Saxon monk theVenerable Bede inDe ratione temporum, theLandnámabók,[citation needed] by the anonymousHistoria Norwegie,[citation needed] and by the German clericAdam of Bremen in hisDeeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church, where they cite both ancient writers' use of Thule as well as new knowledge since the end of antiquity. All these authors also understood that other islands were situated to the north of Britain.
Eustathius of Thessalonica, in his twelfth-century commentary on theIliad, wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with a tribe whose members dwarf-like, only 20 fingers in height.[48] The American classical scholarCharles Anthon believed this legend may have been rooted in history (although exaggerated), if the dwarf or pygmy tribe were interpreted as being a smalleraboriginal tribe of Britain which the people on Thule had encountered.[49]
Petrarch, in the fourteenth century, wrote in hisEpistolae familiares ("Familiar Letters") that Thule lay in the unknown regions of the far north-west.[50]
A madrigal byThomas Weelkes, entitledThule (1600), describes it with reference to the Icelandic volcanoHekla:
The English poetAmbrose Philips began, but did not complete, a poem concerningThe Fable of Thule which he published in 1748.
Thule is referred to inGoethe's poem "Der König in Thule" (1774). The King and Kingdom of Thule referenced in the poem have no historical basis, nor did Goethe claim such. Goethe's poem was famously set to music byFranz Schubert (D 367, 1816),Franz Liszt (S.531) andRobert Schumann (Op.67, No.1), and in the collectionUltima Thule (1880) byHenry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Dream-Land" (1844) begins with the following stanza:
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright.
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule –
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space – out of Time.
John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg wrote on the subject in 1885:
What is the mind’sultima Thule? What substance must be regarded as first, and therefore as the seed of the universe? What is the eternal Something, of which the temporal is but a manifestation? Matter? Spirit? Matter and Spirit? Something behind both and from which they have sprung, neither Matter nor Spirit, but their Creator? Or is there in reality neither Matter nor Spirit, but only an agnostic Cause of the phenomena erroneously assigned by us to body and mind?
After spending many years in profoundly investigating this problem, I have at last struck bottom. Unhesitatingly and unconditionally I adopt materialism, and declare it to be the sole and all-sufficient explanation of the universe. This affords the only thoroughly scientific system; and nowhere but in its legitimate conclusions can thought find suitable resting-place, the heart complete satisfaction, and life a perfect basis. Unless it accepts this system, philosophy will be but drift-wood, instead of the stream of thought whose current bears all truth. Materialism, thorough, consistent, and fearless, not the timid, reserved, and half-hearted kind, is the hope of the world.
— The Final Science: or Spiritual Materialism (1885) by John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg (1835–1903), p. 6[52]
Kelly Miller, addressing the Hampton Alumni Association in 1899, explained that
"Civilization may be defined as the sum total of those influences and agencies that make for knowledge and virtue. This is the goal, theultima Thule, of all human strivings. The essential factors of civilization are knowledge, industry, culture, and virture."[53]
Ultima Thule is the title of the 1929 novel byHenry Handel Richardson, set in colonialAustralia.
Hal Foster's protagonistPrince Valiant gets his title from being the son of Aguar, exiled king of Thule who has taken refuge in theFens during the days ofKing Arthur. Foster places this kingdom of Thule on the Norwegian mainland, nearTrondheim.
"Ultima Thule" is a short story written by authorVladimir Nabokov and published inNew Yorker magazine on April 7, 1973.[54]
Ultima Thule is mentioned inThe Name of the Rose byUmberto Eco in reference to an illuminated manuscript that the narrator/character Adso sees when he explores the library labyrinth alone at the end of the third day. "I opened a richly illuminated volume that, by its style, seemed to me to come from the monasteries of Ultima Thule."[55]
Jorge Luis Borges uses the classic Latin phrase "ultima Thule" in his poem A Reader.[56] He uses the phrase to connect the study of Latin in his younger years to his more recent efforts to read the Icelandic poetSnorri Sturluson.
Bernard Cornwell references Thule in his novelThe Lords of the North, the third book in the seriesThe Last Kingdom. The character Uhtred of Bebbanburg calls it, "that strange land of ice and flame".
Thule is mentioned inAsterix and the Chieftain's Daughter.
Cassandra Clare'sThe Shadowhunter Chronicles, features an alternate dimension called Thule.
Thule is the name of an artificial polar island inSue Burke's sci-fi novel Dual Memory.[57]
Some followers ofariosophy in early 20th-century Germany hypothesized a historical Thule, orHyperborea, as the ancient origin of the "Aryan race" (a term which they believed had been used by the hypotheticalProto-Indo-European people). TheThule Society (Thule Gesellschaft), which had close links to theDeutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP), the precursor organization to theNationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), was, according to its own account, founded on August 18, 1918.[58] In his biography ofLanz von Liebenfels (1874–1954),Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab (published in Munich, 1985; translated asThe Man who Gave Hitler the Ideas), the Viennese psychologist and authorWilfried Daim wrote that the Thule Gesellschaft name originated from mythical Thule. In his history of theSA (Mit ruhig festem Schritt, 1998 –With Firm and Steady Step),Wilfred von Oven,Joseph Goebbels' pressadjutant from 1943 to 1945, confirmed that Pytheas' Thule was the historical Thule for theThule Gesellschaft.
Much of this interest in Thule was initially due to rumours surrounding theOera Linda Book, claimed to have been found by Cornelis over de Linden in the 19th century. TheOera Linda Book was partially translated into German in 1933 byHerman Wirth and was favoured byHeinrich Himmler. The book has since been discredited. Professor ofFrisian Language and Literature Goffe Jensma wrote that the three authors of the translation intended it "to be a temporary hoax to fool some nationalist Frisians and orthodox Christians and as an experiential exemplary exercise in reading the Holy Bible in a non-fundamentalist, symbolical way".[59]
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