Thule - Ancient Geography, Middle Ages, Modern use, "Aryan Thule", References in popular culture

77°30N 69°29W. Eskimo settlement in NW Greenland; on coast of Hayes Halvø peninsula; founded as a Danish trading post in 1910; Danish–US airforce base nearby; scientific installations; name also given by the ancients to the most northerly land of Europe, an island described c.310 BC by the Greek navigator, Pytheas.

"Poets rhymed Thule with newly, truly and unruly, but never, it seemed, with drool."

Ancient Geography

The Greek explorer Pytheas is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, On the Ocean, after his travels between 330 and 320 BCE. 140 BCE), 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 stades, 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 in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak." 30 CE), Book I, Chapter 4, mentions Thule in describing Eratosthenes' 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 Ierne [Ireland] do not mention Thule, though they speak of other islands, small ones, about Britain." Strabo adds the following in Book II, Chapter 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.

Strabo ultimately concludes, in Book IV, Chapter 5, "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."

Nearly a half century later, in 77 CE, Pliny the Elder 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 in Book IV, Chapter 16, he writes: "The farthest of all, which are known and spoke of, is Thule; Finally, in refining the island's location, he places it along the most northerly parallel of those he describes, writing in Book VI, Chapter 34,: "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)."

In the writings of the historian Procopius, from the first half of the sixth century CE, Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by twenty-five tribes. He also writes that when the Heruls returned, they passed the Varni and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. Sandy, in the introduction to his translation of Photius' ninth-century summary of the work , surmises that Thule was "probably Iceland." But in Against Rufinias, the Second Poem, Claudian writes of "Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star."

Over time the known world came to be viewed as bounded in the east by India and in the west by Thule, as expressed in the Consolation of Philosophy (c.

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.

Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages the name was sometimes used to denote Greenland, Svalbard, or Iceland, such as by Bremen's Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church, where he probably cites old writers' usage of Thule.

Modern use

A municipality in North Greenland was formerly named Thule after the mythical place. The Thule People, a paleo-Eskimo culture and a predecessor of modern Inuit Greenlanders, was named after the Thule region. In 1953, Thule became Thule Air Base, operated by United States Air Force. (76 31'50.21"N, 68 42'36.13"W only 840 NM from the North Pole)

Southern Thule is a collection of the three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean.

"Aryan Thule"

Nazi mystics believed in historical Thule/Hyperborea as the ancient origin of the Aryan race. In his biography of Liebenfels ("Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab", Munich 1985), the Viennese psychologist and author Dr Wilhelm Dahm wrote: "The Thule Gesellschaft name originated from mythical Thule, a Nordic equivalent of the vanished culture of Atlantis.

References in popular culture

Jay S Russell's novel, Burning Bright featured a neo-Nazi group, modelled on Combat 18 but with occult leanings, called Ultima Thule. Ultima Thule is the name of Richard Mahony's house in Melbourne in Henry Handel Richardson's The Way Home, and the title of the final part of The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, though the house was sold to Purdy Smith at the end of The Way Home and is referenced only a few times in the titular novel, where it takes on a metaphoric significance. Ultima Thule is the name of a Swedish rock band and the name of an Estonian rock band. An episode of Space: 1999 ("Death's Other Dominion") involves an icy planet, called Ultima Thule by its Earth-born inhabitants. In the comic strip Prince Valiant, the title character is said to be the "Prince of Thule". also in Poe's "The Pit and The Pendulum", referencing the pit as "typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments." British punk band The Fall are sometimes referred to as "The Thule Group", derived from the lyrics of their 1985 track "Gut of the Quantifier". Ultima Thule creek runs through the township of Alexandra, Victoria. A minor planet in the Star Wars universe is named Thule. Lovecraft, one of the locations is Ultima Thule. In the Sega Mega Drive game, Sword of Vermilion, Thule is the name of the final cave where the final boss, Tsarkon is hiding. Thule Records is a defunct record label from Iceland, focusing on electronic music. One of the worlds in Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones is called Thule. The Thule Society features in both the Hellboy comics and, in passing reference, film. Ultima Thule was one of the Elder Kingdoms in Eden Studios' WitchCraft and Armageddon roleplaying game universe. Thule is also a song by the Album Leaf, an American band based out of San Diego. The song was recorded in Iceland for their album In a Safe Place. Ultima Thule is also the name of a set of Finnish glassware from the 60's that captured the look of melting ice and birch bark, designed by Tapio Wirkkala (1915-1985), of Finland. Ultima Thule is a map in the first-person shooter computer game Tribes 2. The first chapter of Poul Anderson's The Boat of a Million Years features Pythaes' alleged visit to Thule.