Thule (, ; ; also spelled as Thylē) is the most northerly location (if not Hyperborea) mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature and cartography. First written of by the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia (modern-day Marseille, France) in about 320 BC, it was often described by later writers as an island north of Ireland or Britain, despite that Pytheas never explicitly described it as an island. Modern interpretations have included Orkney, Shetland, Northern Scotland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. Other potential locations are the island of Saaremaa in Estonia, or the Norwegian island of Smøla.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 metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world". By the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, the Greco-Roman Thule was often identified with the real Iceland or Greenland. Sometimes Ultima Thule was a Latin name for Greenland, when Thule was used for Iceland. By the 19th century, Thule was frequently identified with Norway, Denmark, the whole of Scandinavia, one of the larger Scottish islands, the Faroes, or several of those locations.Bostock & Riley (1893) page 352 (on "Chapter 30 (16) – Britannia") assert: "Opinions as to the identity of ancient Thule have been numerous in the extreme." The notes on Book IV of Pliny in an 1829 translation into French by Ajasson de Grandsagne mention six, which are taken word-for-word in translation by Bostock & Riley (their words in quotes): ― "That Thule is the island of Iceland." Burton (1875) pages 1, 25. "That it is either the Ferroe Group, or one of those islands." Burton pages 22–23. "The notion of Ortelius, Farnaby, and Schœnning, that it is identical with Thylemark in Norway." Burton page 25. "The opinion of Malte Brun, that the continental portion of Denmark is meant thereby, a part of which is to the present day called Thy or Thyland." Fotheringham (1862) page 497. "The opinion of Rudbeck and of Calstron, borrowed originally from Procopius, that this is a general name for the whole of Scandinavia." Grandsagne (1829) page 338: "L'idée de Rudbeck ... et de Calstron ... due originairement à Procope, qui ... a prononcé nettement que sous ce nom était comprise toute la Scandinavie." The reference is to Procopius Book III No. 4. "That of Gosselin, who thinks that under this name Mainland, the principal of the Shetland Islands, is meant. The reference to "Gosselin" or elsewhere "M. Gosselin" and his monumental work dating from the time of the French Revolution is much copied even though miscited. ("M." stands for Monsieur.) The Library of Congress catalog cites the work as: The Thule reference is to be found here Vol 4 page 162 Bostock and Riley continue: "It is by no means impossible that under the name of Thule two or more of these localities may have been meant, by different authors writing at distant periods and under different states of geographical knowledge. It is also pretty generally acknowledged, as Parisot remarks, that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy is identical with Thylemark in Norway."
Thule formerly gave its name to real places. In 1910, the explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post in northwestern Greenland, which he named "Thule". It later gave its name to the northernmost United States Air Force base, Thule Air Base, in northwest Greenland. With the transfer of the base to the United States Space Force, its name was changed to Pituffik Space Base on April 6, 2023.
Classical and medieval accounts
The Greek explorer Pytheas of the Greek city of Massalia (now Marseille, 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, 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."L. Sprague de Camp (1954). Lost Continents, p. 57. Descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in the works of later, often skeptical, authors.Polybius. Book XXXIV, 5, 3
Polybius in his work The 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 in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak."Polybius. Book XXXIV, 5, 3
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".Introduction to the Phenomena, VI. 9 Dionysius Periegetes in his De situ habitabilis orbis also touched upon this subject,Geographici Graeci Minores, 2. 106 as did Martianus Capella.The Problem of Pytheas' Thule, Ian Whitaker, The Classical Journal, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Dec., 1981 – Jan., 1982), pp. 55–67 Avienius in his Ora Maritima added that during the summer on Thule night lasted only two hours, a clear reference to the midnight sun.Whitaker, pp. 56–58.
Strabo, in his Geographica (c. AD 30), 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 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." Strabo ultimately concludes,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." 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.De Situ Orbis, III, 57.
In AD 77, 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, 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)."Book VI, Chapter 34.
Cleomedes referenced Pytheas' journey to Thule, but added no new information.Whitaker, p. 56.
The Roman poet Silius 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", implying a link to the Picts (whose exonym is derived from the Latin pictus "painted"). Martial (AD 40 – 104) talks about "blue" and "painted Britons", just like Julius Caesar. Claudian (AD 370 – 404) also believed that the inhabitants of Thule were Picts. Book VIII
The Roman historian Tacitus, 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.Tacitus, Agricola, 10. Some scholars believe that Tacitus was referring to Shetland.
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 est. The fourth-century Virgilian commentator 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 ..."
Other late classical writers such as Orosius (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 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. Ch. XXXIV
Early in the fifth century AD Claudian, in his poem, On the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius, Book VIII, rhapsodizes on the conquests of the emperor Theodosius I, declaring that the Orcades "ran red with Saxon slaughter; Thule was warm with the blood of Picts; ice-bound Hibernia [Ireland] wept for the heaps of slain Scots". This implies that Thule was Scotland. But in Against Rufinias, the Second Poem, Claudian writes of "Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star". Jordanes in his Getica also wrote that Thule sat under the pole star.Getica, Book I, Chapter 9.
In the writings of the historian Procopius, from the first half of the sixth century, Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by 13 tribes. It is believed that Procopius is really talking about a part of Scandinavia, since several tribes are easily identified, including the Geats (Gautoi) in present-day Sweden and the Sami people (Scrithiphini). He also writes that when the Herules returned, they passed the Warini and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. Procopius's Thule is believed to be the same place as Scandza, as described by Jordanes. Procopius says its inhabitants are pagans who practice human sacrifice.