Hyperborea

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See also: Hyperborea (Finnish folk music group)

See also: Hyperborea (album)

In Greek mythology, according to tradition, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace. Their land, called Hyperborea, or Hyperboria ("beyond the Boreas (north wind)"), was perfect, with the Sun shining twenty-four hours a day.

Never the Muse is absent

from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry

and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.

Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed

in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live.

(Pindar, Tenth Pythian Ode, Richmond Lattimore, translator).

Reaching such exotic lands is never easy:

Never on land or by sea will you find

the marvelous road to the feast of the Hyperborea.

Pindar cautioned. The Greeks thought that Boreas, the North Wind, lived in Thrace, and that therefore Hyperborea was an unspecified nation in the northern lands beyond Scythia.

Contents 1 Legends 2 Modern interpretations 3 Notes 4 Cultural references 5 References

[edit] Legends

Alone among the Twelve Olympians, Apollo was venerated among the Hyperboreans: he spent his winter amongst them.^[1] For their part the Hyperboreans sent mysterious gifts, packed in straw that came first to Dodona and then were passed from people to people until they came to Apollo's temple on Delos (Pausanias). Abaris, Hyperborean priest of Apollo, was a legendary wandering healer and seer. Theseus and Perseus also visited the Hyperboreans.

Along with Thule, Hyperborea was one of several terrae incognitae to the Greeks and Romans, where Pliny and Herodotus, as well as Virgil and Cicero, reported that people lived to the age of one thousand and enjoyed lives of complete happiness. According to Herodotus (4.13) the Hyperboreans lived beyond the Arimaspians and were visited by Aristeas, who is said to have written a hexameter poem (now lost) dealing with them. Hesiod mentioned the Hyperboreans, Herodotus reported, "and Homer also in the Epigoni, if that be really a work of his". Also, the sun was supposed to rise and set only once a year in Hyperborea. Large quantities of gold were here, guarded by griffins.

Maps based on reference points and descriptions description given by Strabo^[2] Hyperborea, shown variously as a peninsula or island, is located beyond France and has a greater latitudinal than longitudinal extent.^[3] Other descriptions put it in the general area of the Ural Mountains.

[edit] Modern interpretations

As with other legends of this sort, selected details can be reconciled with modern knowledge. Above the Arctic Circle, from the time of the vernal equinox to the time of the autumnal equinox, the sun can shine for twenty-four hours a day; it rises and sets only once a year, possibly leading to the erroneous conclusion that a "day" for such persons is a year long, and therefore that living a thousand days would be the same as living a thousand years.

The term "Hyperborean" sees some self-consciously jocular contemporary use to refer to any who live in a cold climate.^[4] Under the Library of Congress classification system, the letter subclass PM includes "Hyperborean Languages", a catch-all category that refers to all the linguistically unrelated languages of peoples living in Arctic regions, such as the Inuit.

Since Herodotus places the Hyperboreans beyond the Massagetae and Issedones, both Central Asian peoples, it appears that his Hyperboreans live in Central or Eastern Asia; while Hecataeus of Abdera clearly places the Hyperboreans in the British Isles.

[edit] Notes

[edit] Cultural references

• In James Joyce's Ulysses, Buck Mulligan tells Stephen, "I'm hyperborean as much as you."
• In the fiction of Robert E. Howard, Hyperborea is a far northern land of fair-haired barbarians, to the north and east of Conan's native Cimmeria.
• Inspired by Howard, H.P. Lovecraft used the name in his mythology for his version of Atlantis.
• Hellboy comics have made use of Lovecraft's image and Hyperborea's links with Nazi mysticism.
• Clark Ashton Smith wrote a cycle of ten stories set in an ancient version of Greenland during a warm habitable phase, see Hyperborea.
• In the 1977 Ray Harryhausen classic fantasy film Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Sinbad the sailor journeys to Hyperborea.
• In the game Rome: Total War, Hyperboria is depicted as the land north of Scythia and Germania.
• Hyperborea is also an online, text-based game, called a MUD, started in 1993.
• A 1983 album by Tangerine Dream
• A track on the 1997 album Substrata by Biosphere
• In Stephen King's third Dark Tower book, The Wastelands, Calvin Tower calls Jake a Hyperborean wanderer.
• The Hyperborean Empire (and fictional myths associated thereof) is a common lyrical theme of metal band Bal-Sagoth, referenced in a three-part song called "The Splendor of a Thousand Swords Gleaming Beneath the Blazon of the Hyperborean Empire" (parts I, II, and III found on albums Starfire Burning Upon the Ice-Veiled Throne of Ultima Thule, Battle Magic, and Atlantis Ascendant; respectively.)
• Edward Cline used the name Hyperborea as the title of a fictional novel appearing in his series of historical novels Sparrowhawk
• George Macdonald briefly mentions the Hyperborean regions in At the Back of the North Wind.
• A bulgarian death metal band, founded in 1997. Official Website
• Friedrich Nietzsche referred to those who followed his philosophy as "Hyperboreans" in The Antichrist (translated by Anthony M. Ludovici.)
• Hyperborea is mentioned in the video game 'Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis' as having some connection with Atlantis.

[edit] References

Portions of this article were formerly excerpted from the public domain Lempriere's Dictionary of 1848.