Ultima Thule

For us, people who were born in the XX century, geographic milestones represents not a huge special interest. The human kind imagination is no longer interested in the vasts white extensions of the poles, neither the deserts or the high peaks. However, there was a remote time when the men was no aware of the existance of many places that today are known even for an elementary school children.

Thule, the farthest north land, plenty of terrible dangers, monsters and unexplainable natural phenomenons, as it was depicted in the imagination of the ancient civilizations. Even when many seriously doubt about the veracity of his deeds, and even if he really ever managed to cross the Artic Circle, it may be considered as the first explorer of the North latitudes in the history of Western civilization to a greek man named Pytheas, who left Massilia, (actual Marseille) somewhere around the year 325 BC and sailed beyond the Hercules Columns.

"The Northern Land" by Victor Vasnetsov. 1899

According to his narrations, he put sail to the North after having left behind Gibraltar and arrived to England and Scottland. Later he sailed furthermore up to the North and after many days he finally arrived to a mysterious place that he named "Ultima Thule".

On his notes, Pytheas wrote that the inhabitants of Ultima Thule were skillfull beekeepers and several other wonders, for instance that in Summer the nights were just 2 or 3 hours long and that from Scottland it took only 5 or 6 days to arrive to Thule. Many contemporary and later authors rejected his statements, or took them with scepticism, among them Polybius and Strabon.

 But what it was "Ultima Thule", the most remote land?? In 825, the Irish monk Dicuil wrote that several Irish monks had discovered a huge island in the farthest west of the Atlantic Sea. It is known that such place is the current Iceland, and Dicuil named it Thule, stating that it was the land Pytheas had arrived many centuries earlier. Another scholar from the 6th century, Procopius, mention Thule as being an Island in the North, inhabited by some 25 tribes. Modern researchers says Procopius was really describing Scandinavia.

Dr. Fridtjof Nansen

Ever since, it has been discussed what was for real the place Pytheas visited. Along the Middle Ages, many European researches gave their own location for Thule, the Orkney Island, the Feroes, Iceland and even some island in the Baltic Sea.

 

But during the XX century, the famous and reknown Norwegian explorer Dr. Fridtjof Nansen had serious reasons for doubt that Pythea´s Thule was indeed Iceland. After having made a serious and careful research, Nansen stated and proved that Pytheas arrived to Norway, moreover, to the zone where the modern city of Trondheim is located. People became disappointed to know that Ultima Thule was nothing but a place just in the middle of Norway and many refused to accept Nansen´s straight and forceful theories. But even had him arrived to Iceland, or "just" to Norway, Pytheas journey was a milestone in history, since it represents the first expedition to the North by a person able to came back alive and write about it. And of course, he left a subject that would be source of polemics, legends, charads, art, argues and imagination for the centuries to come.  

All pics by wikicommons