Maeshowe 16
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Thule was said to be 6 days sailing north-west from Britain, which is probably why Orkney isn't mentioned - it's far too close to mainland Scotland for it to be Thule. I think the concensus now is that Thule was probably Iceland

however, there was also said to be an Ultima Thule beyond Thule, and this it would seem was Greenland (there is even an airbase on Greenland now called <a href="http://www.thule.af.mil">Thule</a>)

I think the names Thule and Ultima Thule have been confused as one and the same at various points, and the Thule "discovered" by Pytheas may well actually have been Greenland. the Gulf Stream comes up the west coast of Scotland and curves round towards Greenland, and would have provided enough extra speed to take a boat from Britain to Greenland in 6 days (see <a href="http://www.ahepafamily.org/d5/pytheas.html">here</a>)

on a slight tangent while we're in the area, anyone interested in Atlantis might like to know that there was a group of islands marked on some early maps halfway between Greenland and Iceland, but on a map in the 1400s it said that the last of these islands was "burned up" in 1350. modern oceanographers have now found sunken volcanoes in the area

Cheers
Andy

There seems to be some difference between Thule and the island supposedly inhabited by the Hyperboreans. Having said that, I'm not too sure how much credence we can place on Thule being '6 days sailing' north-west from Britain. The six days may be absolutely right but then again the term might just be a convention of the times, a convention used to express a few days sailing (if you're lucky) of less than a week (much as forty days and forty nights might mean a period of more than a month but not necessarily one of exactly forty days).

Who knows. Though less precise, ancient descriptions of places are perhaps a little more informative. When, for example, you read of, "... an inaccessible large island, vaguely located in the Outer Ocean due to the cold weather and choppy sea..." I just can't help thinking of Britain (or Ireland). It might be argued that this 'large island' is either Iceland or Greenland but did either support 'interesting' societies two and a half thousand years ago? And even if they did would they have had cultures the Greeks would have been inspired by?

The British Isles, however, had a megalithic building tradition that was already ancient by Greek standards. If I were looking for an 'inaccessible large island vaguely located in the Outer Ocean' and an island of interest, myth and mystery, I know which island I would look to :-)