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by Olaus Magnus .]] Thule or '''Tile''' is in classic sources a place, usually an island, in the far north, often Scandinavia . '''Ultima Thule''' in medieval geographies may also denote any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world". PYTHEAS In Greek legend, probably influenced by the Druid presence in Greece, there existed, as Plato recorded, "a race of Aryan giants" vested with strange occult powers. They came to Greece from an unknown sea region beyond the Pillars of Hercules in order to instruct the few survivors of the global cataclysm. In the Nordic tradition, these giants are the wizards of legend. Hecate of Abdera (lived 400 BC) referred to the British Isles as being a remnant of "Hyperborea" whose major lands had been lost "beyond the ice of the far North". They were also known as the legendary "Land of the Dead of Sacred Thule", and Stonehenge was a temple to Apollo (the god who spoke to the Druid sibyls). Thule and Hyperborea were synonymous, a world in miniature with lakes, rivers, valleys, mountains and freshwater icebergs, where woolly mammoths were the domesticated livestock of the inhabitants. Thule/Hyperborea, being not of this world, was illuminated by a pallid "Black Sun". The people and animals of Thule were giants because gravity was less than at the surface of the globe, allowing a greater physical (and mental) development of all species under the uninterrupted radiations of the Black Sun. The bards of Erin and the priests of Gaul alluded to these ever-young giants: in Thule/Hyperborea there was no ageing, and even Apollo was obliged to visit Thule occasionally "to shed years". Thule was first mentioned by the Greek geographer and explorer Pytheas of Massalía (present-day Marseille ) in the 4th Century BC . In 325 BC Pytheas, a navigator and geographer, set out in search of Thule. He based his navigation theory on the premise that the Earth was spherical and that the Pole Star was constant. This would have enabled him to estimate his latitude from a previous given point. In his writings entitled "On the Ocean", only excerpts of which survive, Pytheas became the first chronicler to describe polar ice, the midnight sun, and the aurora borealis. He also claimed to have discovered Thule which lay "six days sail north from the British Isles" and "one day's sail from where the sea freezes". From this one can conjecture that Thule lay north of the Spitzbergen-Greenland Narrows on the modern meridian of Greenwich. It was from Thule that Pytheas saw the midnight sun and polar ice, and since, as the historian Strabo recorded, there were "waters around it", Thule was an island or landmass set in the high latitudes of the Arctic. Pytheas described Thule as "an agricultural country producing honey whose inhabitants ate fruit and milk, and made a drink of grain and honey. They threshed their grain indoors in barns." Clearly, if Thule sustained a large bee population, supported pasture for livestock and its farmers grew cereals and fruit, it cannot have been anywhere near the Arctic circle. Both the cold and day-length make agriculture there impossible. For this reason the most likely locale for Thule is nowadays considered to be the coast of Norway ; however other historians think it was the Shetland Islands , Faroe Islands , Iceland , or Saaremaa . An alternative suggestion is that Thule exists in the Arctic but drifts between two intersecting worlds and is seen only rarely. In this regard the reported island of San Borondon appears to afford a good comparison.(cf. Wikipedia: Phantom Islands - St Brendan's Island). PROCOPIUS In Procopius , Thule was a large island in the north inhabited by 25 tribes. It is clearly Scandinavia since several tribes are easily identified, such as the Geat s (Gautoi) and the Saami (Scrithiphini). He also wrote that when the Heruls returned, they passed the Varni and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. MIDDLE AGES In the Middle Ages , the name was sometimes used to denote Greenland , Svalbard or Iceland , such as by Bremen's Deeds Of Bishops Of The Hamburg Church , where he probably cites old writers' usage of Thule. MODERN USE A municipality in North Greenland was Formerly Named Thule after the Mythical Place . The Thule People , a Paleo-Eskimo culture and a predecessor of modern Inuit Greenlanders , was named after the Thule region. In 1953, Thule became Thule Air Base , operated by United States Air Force . The population was forced to resettle to Qaanaaq , 67 miles to the north. Hunting activities here are described in the January 2006 National Geographic. (76 31'50.21"N, 68 42'36.13"W only 840 NM from the North Pole) Southern Thule is a collection of the three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean . The island group is Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom and uninhabited. "ARYAN THULE" Nazi Mystics believed in historical Thule/Hyperborea as the ancient origin of the Aryan Race . According to its emblem, the Thule Society was founded in 1919. It had close links to the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (DAP), later the Nazi Party (NSDAP). One of its three founder members was Lanz von Liebenfels (1874-1954). In his biography of Liebenfels ("Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab", Munich 1985), the Viennese psychologist and author Dr Wilhelm Dahm wrote: "The Thule Gesellschaft name originated from mythical Thule, a Nordic equivalent of the vanished culture of Atlantis. A race of giant supermen lived in Thule, linked into the Cosmos through magical powers. They had psychic and technological energies far exceeding the technical achievements of the 20th century. This knowledge was to be put to use to save the Fatherland and create a new race of Nordic Aryan Atlanteans. A new Messiah would come forward to lead the people to this goal." In his work "The Antichrist", the mystical philosopher Nietzsche confirmed the origins of the Aryan race as being "Hyperborea" which, according to him, was located "beyond the ice, beyond the North". REFERENCES IN POPULAR CULTURE
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