Thule (myth)
The ancient Thule ( ancient Greek Θούλη Thoule , also Tuli , Tile or Tyle ) is one of the ancient Greek explorer Pytheas from Massilia (Marseille) in the 4th century BC. Island described in BC, which later acquired a quasi- mythical meaning.
Origin: Report of the Pytheas
Around 325 BC Pytheas toured the Iberian Peninsula and north-western Europe. According to his reports, Thule is in the far north, six days' drive north of Britain . Therefore, the name Thule has literally stood for the northernmost edge of the world ( Latin ultima Thule ) since ancient times . Since Thule etymologically could be related to Urindo-European * telu 'soil', 'level' (cf. Latin tellus or ancient Celtic * telǝ-mō 'earth'), the meaning in Celtic mythology and Germanic mythology was probably “last land” (cf. . the Celtic Otherworld , which, as in the case of Tír na nÓg , was sometimes thought of as an island far to the west - in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean)
Pythea's work "Across the World" is only known through quotations in the works of other authors (including Strabo , Eratosthenes or Pliny the Elder ). It is noteworthy that these authors criticize each other, accuse each other of errors and doubt the distance information. Strabo even accuses him of being a "forger" because other travel reports about Britain and Ireland do not mention the island of Thule, but instead report on many small islands. Pytheas and the authors who followed him located Thule in the far north because, according to one of his notes, the "congealed sea" (probably the Arctic Ocean ) begins a day's drive from Thule. As a result, it is assumed from various sides that it could have been Lofoten , Iceland or the Faroe Islands .
Thule in Roman times
The historian Tacitus reported in his biography of Iulius Agricola (Chapter 10, Paragraph 4) that at the time of Agricola a Roman fleet sailed around the British Isles and thereby proved the island shape of Britain. During the journey the "orcades" ( Orkney Islands ) were discovered and "conquered". Then the sentence follows:
"Dispecta est et Thule, quia hactenus iussum, et hiems adpetebat."
"Thule only came into view because the order only went so far and, moreover, winter was approaching."
The Romans understood “Thule” to mean something that was beyond the “orcades”. Whether this refers to the Shetland Islands is questionable, as it is assumed that these were already named by Pomponius Mela (43 AD) and Pliny the Elder (77 AD) as Haemodae, or Acmodae.
Thule in the Middle Ages
“Thule” was mentioned in various contexts in late antique and medieval writings. The late antique historian Prokop (500-562) reported in his work " Der Gotenkrieg ":
“When the Heruli were defeated by the Lombards and gave up their old residences, some of them [...] settled in Illyria, the other did not want to cross the Danube, but founded residences at the extreme end of the inhabited world: under the leadership of many members of the Royal families they marched first through all the lands of the Slavs , then through the desert, until they came to the warnings . Then they wandered through the land of the Danes. And all these savage people did nothing to them. When they reached the ocean, they boarded the ship and went to Thule, where they stayed. Thule is a very large island, over ten times the size of Britain; from there it is even further north. "
However, it is not clear whether this actually meant the Pyheic Thule, since Beda and Adam von Bremen also used the name for a place that could also mean Iceland. It is likely that the name, known from ancient scripts, was transferred to various places in Northern Europe without there being any need for a connection.
The mythical Thule
The fragmentation of the ancient tradition also means that Thule acquired a mythical meaning as early as Roman times and in the Middle Ages , which is more reminiscent of Avalon , Atlantis or Camelot than the sober pytheic geography.
In this tradition, “Thule” was used as a fictional location in works of art. Goethe's Faust contains the song The King in Thule . A chapter Ultima Thule from Vladimir Nabokov's fragment of the novel Solus Rex has survived . The cartoon character Prince Eisenherz is described as the son of the King of Thule.
Probable geographic location
A research team from the Institute for Geodesy and Geographic Information Technology at the TU Berlin tried to prove Thule's actual geographic location while researching Ptolemy 's map series . According to the research team, the location “Thules” was indicated in these maps, but was not yet verifiable because Ptolemy used a method for determining the geographical latitude that was systematically distorted for Northern Europe and the presumably much more accurate determination by Pytheas ignored. After correction of this error have been found that Thule probably the front Trondheim located Norwegian island Smøla corresponds to that Pytheas had entered the first Greek.
This position determination would agree well with ancient distance information for ship travel. It cannot be determined whether Thule only meant the island of Smøla or the entire fertile region on the Trondheim Bay, which had been trading with the Mediterranean since the Roman Empire at the latest, but was not easily recognizable as the mainland if one headed for them from Britain by ship.
Recent references
Ultima Thule
Geologists call the northernmost land point on earth the “Ultima Thule” . It is a small island on the continental shelf of the northern Greenland coast. Since this area of the lake is continuously traversed by ice masses, new islets keep popping up, each labeled with the year of their discovery. In places, however, these discoveries have often only turned out to be mud and stone deposits on the drifting ice. The northernmost point has been the island of Ultima Thule 2008 , which was discovered by an American expedition in the presence of a film team from NDR since 2008 .
Astronomical object
The trans-Neptunian object (486958) Arrokoth was given the unofficial, provisional name " Ultima Thule " before it was named Arrokoth at the end of 2019 as the most distant object to be examined by a probe at the beginning of 2019 .
Thule Society
In August 1918, the Thule Society emerged from the German anti-Semitic Teutonic Order in Munich , which was supposed to supplement the secret activities of the order in the public domain. The name "Thule" was chosen to hide the connection to the secret society . In addition to its anti-Semitic propaganda activities, the Thule Society was also actively involved in combating the Free People's State of Bavaria , which was proclaimed by Kurt Eisner as part of the November Revolution, and the subsequent Munich Soviet Republic . After that, it soon dissolved.
Thule seminar
Furthermore, “Thule” can be found in the name of the neo - pagan right - wing extremist Thule seminar , which was founded in 1980 in Kassel . The group refers to the name of the Thule Society.
Element thulium
The chemical element thulium , discovered in Sweden in 1879 , was named after Thule.
literature
- Gustav Moritz Redslob: Thule. The Phoenician trade routes to the north, especially to the Amber Lands, as well as the journey of Pytheas from Massilien. Leipzig 1855.
- Richard Francis Burton : Ultima Thule; or, A summer in Iceland. WP Nimmo, London & Edinburgh 1875, pp. 1–34 Digitized
- Barry Cunliffe, Marie-Geneviève l 'Her: Pythéas le grec découvre l'Europe du Nord. Autrement, Paris 2003. ISBN 2-7467-0361-0
- Monique Mund-Dopchie: Ultima Thulé: historie d'un lieu et genèse d'un mythe. Droz, Genève 2008. ISBN 978-2-600-01234-8
- Thibaud Guyon, Jeanine Rey, Philippe Brochard: Pythéas l'explorateur. De Massalia au cercle polar. École des loisirs, Paris 2001. ISBN 2-211-06251-2
- Hugues Journès, Yvon Georgelin, Jean-Marie Gassend: Pythéas, explorateur et astronome. ed. de la Nerthe, Ollioules 2000. ISBN 2-913483-10-0
- Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Eberhard Knobloch and Dieter Lelgemann : Germania and the island of Thule. The decoding of Ptolemy's "Atlas of the Oikumene" . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-23757-9 (book. 131 pages with partly colored maps).
- Jean Mabire: Thulé, le Soleil retrouvé des hyperboréens. Pardès, Paris 1975, Lafont, Paris 1978, Éd. du Trident, Paris 1986. ISBN 2-86714-287-3
- Ferdinand Lallemand: Journal de bord de Pytheas. éditions de Paris, Paris 1956, éditions France-Empire, Paris 1974, J.-M. Garçon, Marseille 1989. ISBN 2-9502847-6-0
- Dimitri Michalopoulos, "Ultima Thule ou Dieu a de l'humour" https://ceshe.fr/actualites/11_ultima-thule-ou-dieu-a-de-l-humour.html
- Samivel (di Paul Gayet-Tancrède): L'or de l'Islande. Arthaud, Paris 1963. German edition: Iceland. Gem in the northern sea. Rascher, Zurich / Stuttgart 1964.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Strabon, Geographika 1,4,2 (English translation)
- ↑ Strabon, Geographika 2,4,1f. (English translation)
- ^ François Lasserre : Thule. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 5, Stuttgart 1975, Col. 799.
- ^ Prokopios of Caesarea : History of War VI.15
- ↑ Axel Bojanowski : A new measurement of the old world . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . Munich October 4, 2007. ISSN 0174-4917
- ^ Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Eberhard Knobloch, Dieter Lelgemann: Germania and the island of Thule. The decryption of Ptolemaios' Atlas der Oikumene , Darmstadt 2010, pp. 104–114. ISBN 978-3-534-23757-9
- ↑ NDR team discovers an island in the arctic ice
- ↑ Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke : The Occult Roots of National Socialism . Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2 2004, p. 129.
- ↑ Martina Kirfel, Walter Oswalt: The return of the leaders . Europaverlag 1991, p. 193.