Fascinating paper Andy, thanks.
If I've understood it properly, however, Eric Anctil is saying that the Greeks thought that, "In spite of the mention of the midnight sun, precision in locating the Hyperboreans on an actual modern map is still limited to the top part of the northern hemisphere inclusive of Britain, Denmark, Russia, Central Asia, or even China..."
Anctil goes on to say that, "...Strabo preserved some very useful fragments from <b>On the Ocean</b> (such as the 19 hours of sunlight per day during the winter months) and his critical reasoning led him to hypothesize that if Thule existed, it would lie north of Ireland or Britain which means it could be the Shetland Islands, Hebrides, Norway, or even Iceland of modern day so long as it was vaguely north of Ireland and Britain..."
Roman sources do seem to place the Hyperboreans in Scandinavia but those sources are quite a bit later. I rather like the idea of the Shetland Islands though. Strangely, unless I've missed it, Anctil doesn't mention Orkney as a possibility.
