Thule ( grc-gre, Θούλη, Thoúlē; la, Thūlē) is the most northerly location mentioned in
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
and
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
* Rome, the capital city of Italy
* Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
literature and
cartography
Cartography (; from grc, χάρτης , "papyrus, sheet of paper, map"; and , "write") is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality (or an i ...
. Modern interpretations have included
Orkney
Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...
,
Shetland
Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom.
The islands lie about to the n ...
, northern Scotland, the island of
Saaremaa (Ösel) in Estonia,
and the Norwegian island of
Smøla
Smøla is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Nordmøre region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Hopen, other villages include Dyrnes, Råket, and Veiholmen.
The municipality ...
.
[Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Eberhard Knobloch und Dieter Lelgemann: ''Germania und die Insel Thule. Die Entschlüsselung von Ptolemaios' "Atlas der Oikumene".'' Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2010.]
In
classical and
medieval literature, ''ultima Thule'' (Latin "farthest Thule") acquired a
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
ical meaning of any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world".
By the
Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Ren ...
and
early modern period, the Greco-Roman Thule was often identified with the real
Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...
or
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...
. Sometimes ''Ultima Thule'' was a Latin name for Greenland, when ''Thule'' was used for Iceland. By the late 19th century, however, ''Thule'' was frequently identified with Norway.
Indeed, many of the settlers of Iceland were fleeing
Harald Fairhair
Harald Fairhair no, Harald hårfagre Modern Icelandic: ( – ) was a Norwegian king. According to traditions current in Norway and Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, he reigned from 872 to 930 and was the first King of No ...
's recent unification of Norway, prominent among them the
Thelir The Thelir or Thilir (Old Norse: ''Þilir''; Norwegian Bokmål: ''teler''; Norwegian Nynorsk: ''telar'' or ''teler'') was a North Germanic tribe that inhabited the region now known as Upper Telemark in modern Norway during the Migration Period and ...
of
Telemark
Telemark is a traditional region, a former county, and a current electoral district in southern Norway. In 2020, Telemark merged with the former county of Vestfold to form the county of Vestfold og Telemark. Telemark borders the traditional ...
(Thylemark). Thelir from neighbouring
Grenland may have similarly named
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...
.
In 1910, the explorer
Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post in north-western Greenland, which he named "Thule" (later
Qaanaaq
Qaanaaq (), formerly known as Thule or New Thule, is the main town in the northern part of the Avannaata municipality in northwestern Greenland. It is one of the northernmost towns in the world. The inhabitants of Qaanaaq speak the local Inukt ...
).
Thule has given its name to the northernmost United States Space Force base,
Thule Air Base in northwest Greenland, and to the smaller lobe of Kuiper belt object
486958 Arrokoth, visited by the ''
New Horizons
''New Horizons'' is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a ...
'' spacecraft.
Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages
The
Greek explorer
Pytheas
Pytheas of Massalia (; Ancient Greek: Πυθέας ὁ Μασσαλιώτης ''Pythéas ho Massaliōtēs''; Latin: ''Pytheas Massiliensis''; born 350 BC, 320–306 BC) was a Greek geographer, explorer and astronomer from the Greek colony ...
of the Greek city of Massalia (now
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Fra ...
, France) is the first to have written of Thule, after his travels between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas mentioned going to Thule in his now
lost work
A lost work is a document, literary work, or piece of multimedia produced some time in the past, of which no surviving copies are known to exist. It can only be known through reference. This term most commonly applies to works from the classical ...
, ''On The Ocean'' Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ (''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." Descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in the works of later, often skeptical, authors.
Polybius
Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail.
Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed ...
in his ''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 thousand
stadia, 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 a
jellyfish
Jellyfish and sea jellies are the informal common names given to the medusa-phase of certain gelatinous members of the subphylum Medusozoa, a major part of the phylum Cnidaria. Jellyfish are mainly free-swimming marine animals with umbre ...
in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak."
The first century BC Greek astronomer
Geminus of Rhodes claimed that the name Thule went back to an archaic word for the
polar night phenomenon – "the place where the sun goes to rest".
Dionysius Periegetes in his ''De situ habitabilis orbis'' also touched upon this subject, as did
Martianus Capella
Martianus Minneus Felix Capella (fl. c. 410–420) was a jurist, polymath and Latin prose writer of late antiquity, one of the earliest developers of the system of the seven liberal arts that structured early medieval education. He was a nati ...
.
Avienius in his ''
Ora Maritima'' added that during the summer on Thule night lasted only two hours, a clear reference to the
midnight sun
The midnight sun is a natural phenomenon that occurs in the summer months in places north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle, when the Sun remains visible at the local midnight. When the midnight sun is seen in the Arctic, ...
.
Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called " Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could s ...
, in his ''
Geographica
The ''Geographica'' (Ancient Greek: Γεωγραφικά ''Geōgraphiká''), or ''Geography'', is an encyclopedia of geographical knowledge, consisting of 17 'books', written in Greek and attributed to Strabo, an educated citizen of the Roman ...
'' (c. AD 30), mentions Thule in describing
Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; grc-gre, Ἐρατοσθένης ; – ) was a Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist. He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandr ...
' 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 the
Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the most northerly of the five major circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth. Its southern equivalent is the Antarctic Circle.
The Arctic Circle marks the southernmost latitude at ...
." Strabo ultimately concludes,
[Book IV, Chapter 5](_blank)
"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".
The mid-first century Roman geographer
Pomponius Mela placed Thule north of
Scythia
Scythia ( Scythian: ; Old Persian: ; Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) or Scythica (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), also known as Pontic Scythia, was a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BC in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
...
.
In AD 77,
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...
published his ''
Natural 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,
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)."
The Roman historian
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
, 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. Some scholars believe that Tacitus was referring to
Shetland
Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom.
The islands lie about to the n ...
.
The third-century Latin grammarian
Gaius Julius Solinus wrote in his ''Polyhistor'' 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".
[Ab Orcadibus Thylen usque quinque dierum ac noctium navigatio est; sed Thyle larga et diutina Pomona copiosa es]
/ref> The 4th century Virgilian commentator Maurus Servius Honoratus, Servius 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..."["''Thule; insula est Oceani inter septemtrionalem et occidentalem plagam, ultra Britanniam, iuxta Orcades et Hiberniam; in hac Thule cum sol in Cancro est, perpetui dies sine noctibus dicuntur ...']
/ref>
Other late classical writers such as Orosius
Paulus Orosius (; born 375/385 – 420 AD), less often Paul Orosius in English, was a Roman priest, historian and theologian, and a student of Augustine of Hippo. It is possible that he was born in ''Bracara Augusta'' (now Braga, Portugal), t ...
(384–420) describe Thule as being north and west of both Ireland and Britain, strongly suggesting that it was Iceland.
Solinus Solinus may refer to:
* Gaius Julius Solinus, a 3rd century Latin author
* Solinus (horse), a British racehorse (1975–1979)
* Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, a character in William Shakespeare's play ''The Comedy of Errors''
See also
* Salinas (disam ...
(d. AD 400) in his ''Polyhistor'', repeated these descriptions, noting that the people of Thule had a fertile land where they grew a good production of crop and fruits.
In the writings of the historian Procopius
Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman gen ...
, 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 of Scandinavia, since several tribes are easily identified, including the Geats
The Geats ( ; ang, gēatas ; non, gautar ; sv, götar ), sometimes called ''Goths'', were a large North Germanic tribe who inhabited ("land of the Geats") in modern southern Sweden from antiquity until the late Middle Ages. They are one of t ...
(''Gautoi'') in present-day Sweden and the Sami people
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...
(''Scrithiphini''). He also writes that when the Herules
The Heruli (or Herules) were an early Germanic people. Possibly originating in Scandinavia, the Heruli are first mentioned by Roman authors as one of several " Scythian" groups raiding Roman provinces in the Balkans and the Aegean Sea, attackin ...
returned, they passed the Warini
The Varini, Warni or Warini were one or more Germanic peoples who originally lived in what is now northeastern Germany, near the Baltic sea.
They are first named in the Roman era, and appear to have survived into the Middle Ages. It is proposed ...
and the Danes
Danes ( da, danskere, ) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nationality native to Denmark and a modern nation identified with the country of Denmark. This connection may be ancestral, legal, historical, or cultural.
Danes generally regard t ...
and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats.
The Irish monk Dicuil 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".
Modern research
The British surveyor Charles Vallancey
General Charles Vallancey FRS (6 April 1731 – 8 August 1812) was a British military surveyor sent to Ireland. He remained there and became an authority on Irish antiquities. Some of his theories would be rejected today, but his drawings, fo ...
(1731–1812) was one of many antiquarians to argue that Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...
was Thule, as he does in his book ''An essay on the antiquity of the Irish language''.
Another hypothesis, first proposed by Lennart Meri
Lennart Georg Meri (; 29 March 1929 – 14 March 2006) was an Estonian politician, writer, and film director. He served as the second president of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. Meri was among the leaders of the movement to restore Estonian indepen ...
in 1976, holds that the island of Saaremaa (which is often known by the exonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group ...
Osel) in Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...
, could be Thule. That is, there is a phonological similarity between Thule and the root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the su ...
''tule-'' "of fire" in Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also
*
...
(and other Finnic languages
The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7  ...
). A crater lake named Kaali on the island appears to have been formed by a meteor strike
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or moon. When the original object ...
in prehistory. 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".
In 2010, scientists from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science at the Technical University of Berlin
The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...
claimed to have identified persistent errors in calculation that had occurred in attempts by modern geographers to superimpose geographic coordinate system
The geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or ellipsoidal coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on the Earth as latitude and longitude. It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various ...
s upon Ptolemaic maps. After correcting for these errors, the scientists claimed, Ptolemy's Thule could be mapped to the Norwegian island of Smøla
Smøla is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway. It is part of the Nordmøre region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Hopen, other villages include Dyrnes, Råket, and Veiholmen.
The municipality ...
.[
]
Modern geography and science
In 1775, during his second voyage, Captain Cook named an island in the high southern latitudes of the South Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
, Southern Thule. The name is now used for a group of three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands, one of which is called Thule Island. The island group became a British overseas territory
The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Br ...
of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
, albeit also claimed by Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...
(in Spanish ''Islas Tule del Sur'').
In 1910, the explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post, which he named Thule (Inuit: ''Avanaa'') on Greenland. The Thule people
The Thule (, , ) or proto-Inuit were the ancestors of all modern Inuit. They developed in coastal Alaska by the year 1000 and expanded eastward across northern Canada, reaching Greenland by the 13th century. In the process, they replaced people o ...
, the predecessor of modern Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territorie ...
Greenlanders
This is a demography of the population of Greenland including population density, ethnicity, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Populations
the resident population of Greenland was estimated at 56,562, ...
, were named after the Thule region. In 1953, Avanaa became Thule Air Base, operated by United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...
. The population was forced to resettle to New Thule (Qaanaaq), to the north ( only 840 NM from the North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Ma ...
).
The Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
for Iceland
Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...
is ''Innis Tile'', which literally means the "Isle of Thule".
Thule lends its name to the 69th element in the periodic table
The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the (chemical) elements, is a rows and columns arrangement of the chemical elements. It is widely used in chemistry, physics, and other sciences, and is generally seen as an icon of ch ...
, thulium.
Ultima Thule is the name of a location in the Mammoth 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 and Max Kaemper
Max or MAX may refer to:
Animals
* Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog
* Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE)
* Max (gorilla) ...
showed an area accessible beyond it, now the location of the Violet City Entrance
Violet may refer to:
Common meanings
* Violet (color), a spectral color with wavelengths shorter than blue
* One of a list of plants known as violet, particularly:
** ''Viola'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants
Places United States
* Vio ...
. The Violet City Lantern tour offered at the cave passes through Ultima Thule near the conclusion of the route.
The Southern Thule islands were occupied by Argentina in 1976. The occupation was not militarily contested by the British until the 1982 Falklands War
The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial ...
, during which time British sovereignty was restored by a contingent of Royal Marines
The Corps of Royal Marines (RM), also known as the Royal Marines Commandos, are the UK's special operations capable commando force, amphibious warfare, amphibious light infantry and also one of the :Fighting Arms of the Royal Navy, five fighti ...
. Currently the three islands are uninhabited.
In March 2018, following a naming competition, the Kuiper belt
The Kuiper belt () is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 tim ...
object 486958 Arrokoth, a fly-by target of the NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
probe ''New Horizons
''New Horizons'' is an interplanetary space probe that was launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a ...
'', 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 the International Astronomical Union
The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreac ...
.
Literary references
Classical literature
In the metaphorical sense of a far-off land or an unattainable goal, Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
coined the term ''Ultima Thule'' (Georgics
The ''Georgics'' ( ; ) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word , ''geōrgika'', i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example ...
, 1. 30) meaning "farthermost Thule".
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.
Seneca was born ...
writes of a day when new lands will be discovered past Thule. This was later quoted widely in the context of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
* lij, Cristoffa C(or)ombo
* es, link=no, Cristóbal Colón
* pt, Cristóvão Colombo
* ca, Cristòfor (or )
* la, Christophorus Columbus. (; born between 25 August and 31 October 1451, died 20 May 1506) was a ...
' voyages.
The Roman poet Silius Italicus
Tiberius Catius Asconius Silius Italicus (, c. 26 – c. 101 AD) was a Roman senator, orator and epic poet of the Silver Age of Latin literature. His only surviving work is the 17-book '' Punica'', an epic poem about the Second Punic War and th ...
(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", implying a link to the Picts
The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ea ...
(whose exonym
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group ...
is derived from the Latin ''pictus'' "painted"). Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 and ...
(AD 40 – 104) talks about "blue" and "painted Britons", just like Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, an ...
. Claudian (AD 370 – 404) also believed that the inhabitants of Thule were Picts.
A work of prose fiction in Greek by Antonius Diogenes
Antonius Diogenes ( grc, Ἀντώνιος Διογένης) was the author of an ancient Greek romance entitled ''The Wonders Beyond Thule'' (Τὰ ὑπὲρ Θoύλην ἄπιστα ''Apista huper Thoulen''). Scholars have placed him in the 2n ...
entitled ''The Wonders Beyond Thule'' appeared c. AD 150 or earlier. (Gerald N. Sandy, in the introduction to his translation of Photius
Photios I ( el, Φώτιος, ''Phōtios''; c. 810/820 – 6 February 893), also spelled PhotiusFr. Justin Taylor, essay "Canon Law in the Age of the Fathers" (published in Jordan Hite, T.O.R., & Daniel J. Ward, O.S.B., "Readings, Cases, Materia ...
' ninth century summary of the work,
notes that this Thule most closely matches Iceland.)
Cleomedes
Cleomedes ( el, Κλεομήδης) was a Greek astronomer who is known chiefly for his book ''On the Circular Motions of the Celestial Bodies'' (Κυκλικὴ θεωρία μετεώρων), also known as ''The Heavens'' ( la, Caelestia).
Pl ...
referenced Pytheas' journey to Thule, but added no new information.
Early in the fifth century AD Claudian
Claudius Claudianus, known in English as Claudian (; c. 370 – c. 404 AD), was a Latin poet associated with the court of the Roman emperor Honorius at Mediolanum (Milan), and particularly with the general Stilicho. His work, written almost e ...
, in his poem, ''On the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius''
Book VIII
rhapsodizes on the conquests of the emperor Theodosius I
Theodosius I ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος ; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also called Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. During his reign, he succeeded in a crucial war against the Goths, as well as in two ...
, declaring that the ''Orcades'' "ran red with Saxon
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
*
*
*
*
peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
slaughter; Thule was warm with the blood of Picts
The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ea ...
; ice-bound Hibernia relandwept for the heaps of slain Scots". This implies that Thule was Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...
. But in ''Against Rufinias'', th
Second Poem
Claudian writes of "Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star". Jordanes
Jordanes (), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history ('' Romana'') an ...
in his ''Getica'' also wrote that Thule sat under the pole-star.
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 the '' Consolation of Philosophy'' (III, 203 = metrus V, v. 7) by Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known as Boethius (; Latin: ''Boetius''; 480 – 524 AD), was a Roman senator, consul, ''magister officiorum'', historian, and philosopher of the Early Middle Ages. He was a central figure in the t ...
. "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."
Medieval and early modern works
In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville ( la, Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 – 4 April 636) was a Spanish scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of ...
wrote in his ''Etymologies
Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words a ...
'' 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.
Isidore distinguished this from the islands of Britannia, Thanet (''Tanatos''), the Orkney (''Orcades''), and Ireland (''Scotia'' or ''Hibernia''). Isidore was to have a large influence upon Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom ...
, who was later to mention Thule.
By the late Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, scholars were linking Iceland and/or Greenland to the name Thule and/or places reported by the Irish mariner Saint Brendan (in the 6th century) and other distant or mythical locations, such as Hy Brasil
Brasil, also known as Hy-Brasil and several other variants, is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mist except for one day every seven years, when it becomes visible but ...
and Cockaigne
Cockaigne or Cockayne () is a land of plenty in medieval myth, an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures are always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life does not exist. ...
. These scholars included works by Dicuil (see above), the Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...
monk the Venerable Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom ...
in ''De ratione temporum
''The Reckoning of Time'' ( la, De temporum ratione) is an Anglo-Saxon era treatise written in Medieval Latin by the Kingdom of Northumbria, Northumbrian monk Bede in 725. The treatise includes an introduction to the traditional ancient and med ...
'', the Landnámabók
(, "Book of Settlements"), often shortened to , is a medieval Icelandic written work which describes in considerable detail the settlement () of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries CE.
is divided into five parts and ov ...
, by the anonymous ''Historia Norwegie
Historia may refer to:
* Historia, the local version of the History channel in Spain and Portugal
* Historia (TV channel), a Canadian French language specialty channel
* Historia (newspaper), a French monthly newspaper devoted to History topics
* ...
'', and by the German cleric Adam of Bremen
Adam of Bremen ( la, Adamus Bremensis; german: Adam von Bremen) (before 1050 – 12 October 1081/1085) was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. Adam is most famous for his chronicle ''Gest ...
in his ''Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church
''Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum'' ( Medieval Latin for ''"Deeds of the Bishops of Hamburg"'') is a historical treatise written between 1073 and 1076 by Adam of Bremen, who made additions (''scholia'') to the text until his death (pos ...
'', 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
Eustathius of Thessalonica (or Eustathios of Thessalonike; el, Εὐστάθιος Θεσσαλονίκης; c. 1115 – 1195/6) was a Byzantine Greek scholar and Archbishop of Thessalonica. He is most noted for his contemporary account of the s ...
, in his twelfth-century commentary on the ''Iliad
The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Ody ...
,'' wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with a tribe whose members dwarf-like, only 20 fingers in height. The American classical scholar Charles Anthon believed this legend may have been rooted in history (although exaggerated), if the dwarf or pygmy tribe were interpreted as being a smaller aboriginal tribe of Britain the people on Thule had encountered.
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited ...
, in the fourteenth century, wrote in his '' Epistolae familiares'' ("Familiar Letters") that Thule lay in the unknown regions of the far north-west.
A madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, entitled ''Thule'' (1600), describes it with reference to the Icelandic volcano Hekla:
The English poet Ambrose Philips
Ambrose Philips (167418 June 1749) was an English poet and politician. He feuded with other poets of his time, resulting in Henry Carey bestowing the nickname " Namby-Pamby" upon him, which came to mean affected, weak, and maudlin speech or verse ...
began, but did not complete, a poem concerning '' The Fable of Thule'' which he published in 1748.
Thule is referred to in Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as tr ...
's poem "Der König in Thule
"" ("The King in Thule") is a German poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, written in 1774.
Goethe wrote the poem "" as a precursor of "", while he was travelling to Lahneck Castle on the river Lahn in July 1774. Under Herder's influence, the setti ...
" (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 by Franz Schubert
Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wo ...
(D 367, 1816), Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...
(S.531) and Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
(Op.67, No.1), and in the collection '' Ultima Thule'' (1880) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and '' Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely trans ...
.
Modern literature
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wid ...
's poem " Dream-Land" (1844) begins with the following stanza:
John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg wrote on the subject in 1885:
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, the ''ultima Thule,'' of all human strivings. The essential factors of civilization are knowledge, industry, culture, and virture."
''Ultima Thule'' is the title of the 1929 novel by Henry Handel Richardson, set in colonial Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
.
Hal Foster
Harold Rudolf Foster, FRSA (August 16, 1892 – July 25, 1982) was a Canadian-American comic strip artist and writer best known as the creator of the comic strip '' Prince Valiant''. His drawing style is noted for its high level of draftsmanship ...
's protagonist Prince Valiant
''Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur'', often simply called ''Prince Valiant'', is an American comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretc ...
gets his title from being the son of Aguar, exiled king of Thule who has taken refuge in the Fens during the days of King Arthur. Foster places this kingdom of Thule on the Norwegian mainland, near Trondheim
Trondheim ( , , ; sma, Tråante), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, an ...
.
"Ultima Thule" is a short story written by author Vladimir Nabokov and published in ''New Yorker'' magazine on April 7, 1973.
Jorge Luis Borges uses the classic Latin phrase "ultima Thule" in his poem A Reader. He uses the phrase to connect the study of Latin in his younger years to his more recent efforts to read the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson
Snorri Sturluson ( ; ; 1179 – 22 September 1241) was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was elected twice as lawspeaker of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. He is commonly thought to have authored or compiled portions of th ...
.
Bernard Cornwell references Thule in his novel ''The Lords of the North'', the third book in the series ''The Last Kingdom''. The character Uhtred of Bebbanburg calls it, "that strange land of ice and flame".
Thule is mentioned in ''Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter
Asterix and the Chieftain's Daughter (French: ''La Fille de Vercingétorix'', "The Daughter of Vercingetorix") is the 38th book in the Asterix series, and the fourth to be written by Jean-Yves Ferri and illustrated by Didier Conrad. The book ...
''.
Cassandra Clare's '' The Shadowhunter Chronicles'', features an alternate dimension called Thule.
In Nazi ideology
In Germany, occultists believed in a historical Thule, or Hyperborea, as the ancient origin of the "Aryan race
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern ...
" (a term which they believed had been used by the Proto-Indo-European people
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric population of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction.
Knowledge of them comes chiefly from ...
). The Thule Society, which had close links to the '' Deutsche Arbeiter Partei'' (DAP, later known as the ''Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported th ...
'', NSDAP) was, according to its own account, founded on August18, 1918. In his biography of Lanz von Liebenfels
Lanz may refer to:
Places
* Lanz, Brandenburg, a municipality in Brandenburg, Germany
* a village in the municipality Störnstein in Bavaria, Germany
* Lanz, German name from Lomnice, a village in Sokolov District, Czech Republic
*Lanz Peak in ...
(1874–1954), ''Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab'' (published in Munich, 1985; translated as ''The Man who Gave Hitler the Ideas''), the Viennese psychologist and author Wilfried Daim wrote that the Thule Gesellschaft name originated from mythical Thule. In his history of the SA (''Mit ruhig festem Schritt'', 1998 – ''With Firm and Steady Step''), Wilfred von Oven
Wilfred von Oven (4 May 1912 – 13 June 2008) was a German journalist, publicist and civil servant who served as the Press Adjutant of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels between 1943 and the German capitulation in 1945.
Biography
Wilfred von ...
, Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the '' Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to ...
' press adjutant from 1943 to 1945, confirmed that Pytheas' Thule was the historical Thule for the ''Thule Gesellschaft''.
Much of this fascination was due to rumours surrounding the '' Oera Linda Book'', claimed to have been found by Cornelis over de Linden during the nineteenth century. The ''Oera Linda Book'' was partially translated into German in 1933 by Herman Wirth and was favored by Heinrich Himmler. The book has since been discredited. Professor of Frisian 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".
See also
* Mythical place
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrati ...
* Phantom island
A phantom island is a purported island which was included on maps for a period of time, but was later found not to exist. They usually originate from the reports of early sailors exploring new regions, and are commonly the result of navigati ...
References
Bibliography
* Downloadable Google Books.
*
*
* Joanna Kavenna
Joanna Kavenna (born 1974) is an English novelist, essayist and travel writer of Welsh extraction. Her six novels have been widely rated and appreciated.
Biography
Welsh by family, with Scandinavian ancestry, Kavenna was born in Leicester and ...
, ''The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule'', London, Penguin, 2006.
*
*
*
External links
Site with detailed notes on the classical and Renaissance sources for Thule
{{Authority control
Geography of Europe
Geography of Greenland
Mythological islands
Phantom islands of the Atlantic
Occultism in Nazism
Locations in Greek mythology
Ancient Greek geography