So in my bid to make the world a better place, I've decided to visit a very under-utilized resource in our day and age: THE LIBRARY. I thought I should go and see books in their natural habitat.
No, I didn't run into a senator--I'll have to catch him next round. But I did find a very interesting book called The Ice Museum which chronicles the different attempts to get to the North Pole. While I thought this book would be interesting at best, it started making allusions to the mythical Land of Thule (pronounced Thoolay or toolay). How have I never heard of this? Now I may not be the most studious of history lovers, but I'm pretty sure I remember all the fantastical lands that no one ever found. Now, the book lists nearly all the historical and modern references to Ultima Thule, but most poets have written about it in passing, not necessarily about this strange land. Only a few paragraphs of Thule Knowledge exist.
Ultima Thule is supposedly a land to the North that Pytheas sailed to. Some thought it was North of Britain, some thought it was Britain, and still others thought it was North of Scandinavia somewhere. On old maps, it appears as Iceland or Greenland (great new name for Iceland, eh?). Strabo in his Geographica writes:
"...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."
It was apparently a 19th century Atlantis, and the cause of many treks to find the North Pole, all outlined in this book. It was even a Nazi obsession for awhile, and many Germans at the time believed the superior "German race" hailed from there. Well, humanity managed to map out the whole North Pole and Ultima Thule was not found. I'm assuming that's the rest of this book.
On an unrelated note, I've been jotting down this story that's been running around in my head loosely based on the Tuatha De Danaan, but placed in a much more northerly kingdom. I'm thinking Thule is a much more interesting myth!
| Mommy? Where do the kids charge their e-readers while the adults talk? |
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| Proto-Inuits mistakenly named the Thule Eskimos. |
Ultima Thule is supposedly a land to the North that Pytheas sailed to. Some thought it was North of Britain, some thought it was Britain, and still others thought it was North of Scandinavia somewhere. On old maps, it appears as Iceland or Greenland (great new name for Iceland, eh?). Strabo in his Geographica writes:
"...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."
It was apparently a 19th century Atlantis, and the cause of many treks to find the North Pole, all outlined in this book. It was even a Nazi obsession for awhile, and many Germans at the time believed the superior "German race" hailed from there. Well, humanity managed to map out the whole North Pole and Ultima Thule was not found. I'm assuming that's the rest of this book.
On an unrelated note, I've been jotting down this story that's been running around in my head loosely based on the Tuatha De Danaan, but placed in a much more northerly kingdom. I'm thinking Thule is a much more interesting myth!
