Hyperborea

In Greek mythology, according to tradition, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived far to the north of Thrace. 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. Their land, called Hyperborea or Hyperboria — "beyond the Boreas" — 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; Pindar cautioned::Never on land or by sea will you find:the marvelous road to the feast of the Hyperborea.

Legends

Alone among the Twelve Olympians, Apollo was venerated among the Hyperboreans: he spent his winter amongst them. [J. Rendel Harris, 1925. "Apollo at the Back of the North Wind", "Journal of Hellenic Studies" 45.2 pp. 229-242.] 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), Aristeas had written a hexameter poem (now lost) about a journey to the Issedones. Beyond these lived the one-eyed Arimaspians, further on there were gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans. 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, which would place it at the North Pole.

In maps based on reference points and descriptions given by Strabo, [Strabo, 11.4.3.] Hyperborea, shown variously as a peninsula or island, is located beyond France and has a greater latitudinal than longitudinal extent. [Fridtjof Nansen. " In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times". Frederick A. Stokes co., 1911. Page 188.] Other descriptions put it in the general area of the Ural Mountains.

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; at the extremes (that is, the Poles), 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.

Since Herodotus places the Hyperboreans beyond the Massagetae and Issedones, both Central Asian peoples, it appears that his Hyperboreans may have lived in Siberia. Heracles sought the golden-antlered hind of Artemis in Hyperborea. As the reindeer is the only deer species of which females bear antlers, this would suggest an arctic or subarctic region. Following J.D.P. Bolton's location of the Issedones on the south-western slopes of the Altay mountains, Carl P.Ruck places Hyperborea beyond the Dzungarian Gate into northern Xinjiang, noting that the Hyperboreans were probably Chinese. [Citation
last = Wasson
first = R.G.
author-link = R. Gordon Wasson
last2 = Kramrisch
first2 = Stella
last3 = Ott et al
first3 = Jonathan
title = Persephone's Quest - Entheogens and the origins of Religion
publisher = Yale University Press
year = 1986
pages = 227-230
isbn = 0-300-05266-9] Hecataeus of Abdera, however, clearly places the Hyperboreans in the British Isles.

Avram Davidson, in an essay in his book "Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends", proposed the theory that Hyperborea was derived from a logical (though erroneous) explanation by the Greeks for the fact that embedded inside the amber arriving in their cities by trade with northern, cold countries were insects which obviously originated in a warm climate.

Not aware of the explanation offered by modern science (i.e. that these insects had lived in times when the climate of northern Europe was much warmer, their bodies preserved unchanged in the amber) the Greeks came up with the idea that north countries being cold was due to the cold breath of Boreas, the North Wind. Therefore, should one be able to get beyond him (Hyperborea literally means "beyond Boreas") one would find a warm and sunny land.

The term "Hyperborean" sees some self-consciously jocular contemporary use to refer to any who live in a cold climate. [Gregg Easterbrook refers to the Minnesota Vikings football team (NFL) as the "Hyperboreans" in his "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" articles on ESPN's website.] 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.

Hyperborea in Modern Esoteric Thought

H.P. Blavatsky, Rene Guenon and Julius Evola all shared the belief in theHyperborean, polar origins of mankind and a subsequent solidificationand devolution (cf. [http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/hyperborea.html] ). According to these esoterists, Hyperborea was the Golden Age polar center of civilization and spirituality; and Humankind does not rise from the ape, but progressively physicalizes into the apelike condition as it strays physically and spiritually from its mystical otherworldly homeland in the Far North, succumbing to the demonic energies of the South Pole, the greatest point of materialization (see Joscelyn Godwin, "Arktos: The Polar Myth").

Cultural references

* Australian artist Norman Lindsay in July 1923 first exhibited his etching Hyperborea in Sydney. A month later he published two essays about Hyperborea, the first in Vision, No. 2, in which he said that only a picture or a poem could describe Hyperborea. The essays were later combined as Hyperborea: Two Fantastic Travel Essays by Fanfrolico Press in 1928.
* Clark Ashton Smith authored a series of short stories known as the Hyperborean cycle (1931-58). Some elements were borrowed by H. P. Lovecraft into what later became known as the Cthulhu Mythos. In Robert E. Howard's Conan stories (1932-36), Hyperborea is a land to the north-east of Conan's native Cimmeria.
* The "Hyperboreans" (Hyperboreisch-römische Gesellschaft) was a group of northern European scholars who studied classical ruins in Rome, founded in 1824 by Theodor Panofka, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg , August Kestner and Eduard Gerhard.
*Friedrich Nietzsche referred to those who followed his philosophy as "Hyperboreans" in "The Antichrist".
* Hyperborea and its inhabitants are referenced on occasion in the "Hellboy" comic book universe, particularly in the miniseries "Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus".
*Is one of the regions far north in .
*Bal-Sagoth metal band features one of the stories of their lyrics in the Hyperborean Empire.
* Tangerine Dream has a title track on their 1983 release of the same name 'Hyperborea'.
* 'Hyperborea' is the opening track of Horse the Band's album A Natural Death.

Notes

Referred to in the original version of Moby Dick, or the Whale by Hermman Melville.

References

* Portions of this article were formerly excerpted from the public domain Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary", 1848.