Ultima Thule; or, A Summer in Iceland. vol. 1/2

V. THULE=ICELAND.

It has been shown that the accounts of Pytheas, supported by details from Pliny and Ptolemy, refer only to Iceland. They are confirmed by the following authorities. In Caius Julius Solinus (A.D. 230; 2 vols. fol., Traj. ad Rhenum, 1689), we find Thule five days’ sail from Orkney, and we cannot allow less than 100 knots for the d???? ?????e???, or a total of 500 direct geographical miles; the run from northern Orkney to the south coast of Iceland being about this distance. The Polyhistor, held an oracle in the Middle Ages, adds (chap, xx., lll):

“Inter multas quÆ circa Britanniam sunt insulas, Thylen ultimam esse commemorat. In quÂ Æstivo solstitio dicit esse noctem nullam. Brumali verÒ perinde diem nullum.”[41]

Orosius, whose history (London, 8vo, 1773) extends to A.D. 417, says:

“Tylen per infinitum À cÆteris separatam undique terris in medio sitam oceano vix paucis notam haberi.”

Isidorus Hispalensis (A.D. 600-636; Orig. Seu Etym., xiv. 6; Opera Omnia, fol., Parisiis, 1601) appears to repeat Pliny:

“Thyle verÒ ultimam oceani insulam inter Septentrionem et occidentalem plagam,[42] ultra Britanniam sitam esse describit, À sole nomen habentem, quia in eÂ Æstivum solstitium sol faciat, et nullus ultra eam dies sit. Ultra Thylen vÈro pigrum et concretum mare.”

The last sentence of the bishop being emphatically true in winter. Other authorities who identify Thule with Iceland, are Cluverius (Germ. Ant., ii. 39), Harduin and Dalechamp (Ad Plin.), Bougainville (c. 1, p. 152), Hill (Ad Dionys.), Penzel (Ad Strab.), Pontanus (Chorog. Dan. Descrip., p. 74), Isaac Thilo (Dissert., Lips., A.D. 1660), Gerhard Mercator, and Mannert (Geog., i., p. 78), to mention no others. Martin (Histoire des Gaules, i. 159) takes the Gauls to Iceland.

In the ninth century we have positive evidence that Thule had returned to its oldest signification, Iceland. The monk Dicuilus, who wrote in the year 825,[43] relates that thirty years before that date (A.D. 795) he had seen and spoken with several religious who had inhabited the island of Thule between February and August. He asserts that Iceland and the FÆroes had been discovered by his countrymen; and his calculation of the seasons and the days at different times of the year, together with the assertion that a day’s sail thence towards the north would bring them to the Frozen Sea, shows that “Iceland, and Iceland alone, could have been the island visited by the anchorites.”

The Domesday Book of the north, the “LandnÁmabÓk,” whose lists of 1400 places and 3000 persons were drawn up by various authors in the twelfth century, supported, according to Mr Blackwell (note, p. 189), “by other ancient Icelandic documents,” simply states (Prologus, p. 2), “Before Iceland was settled by the Northmen there were men there called by the Northmen PapÆ. These men were Christians, and are thought to have come from the west, for there were found Irish books, bells (biÖllur), staves (baglar), and various other things, whence it is thought that they were Westmen,” Irishmen—a name still preserved in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. Moreover, we learn that these relics were found in Papey (the Isle of the PapÆ), a rock off the eastern coast, which still bears the same name, and at Papyli, in the interior; and finally, that “the Christians left the country when the Northmen settled there”[44]—the latter being pragmatical pagans.

Mr Blackwell concludes that these people were probably fishermen from the north of Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland, who may annually have frequented the northern seas, and made Papey one of their winter stations. Mr Dasent (i., vii.) more justly identifies them with the Papar or Culdees (?), a class of churchmen who have left their traces in almost every one of the outlying islands of the west. Under the name of “Papar” we find them in the Orkneys and Shetlands, the FÆroes and Iceland; “and to this day the term ‘Papey’ in all these localities denotes the fact that the same pious monks who had followed St Columba[45] to Iona, and who had filled the cells at Enhallow and Egilsha and Papa, in the Orkneys, were those who, according to the account of Dicuil, had sought Thule or Iceland that they might pray to God in peace.”[46] These Culdees were not likely to spread, as they carried no women, but they left traces of their occupation in their cells and church furniture.

The simple story told by Dicuil is eminently suggestive. Thus Thule became, probably for a second time, one of the “BritanniÆ,” the Isles of Britain; and we may consider the discovery a rediscovery, like the central African lakes, whence Ptolemy derived the Nile. When the rude barks of the eighth century could habitually ply between Ireland and Iceland, we cannot reject as unfit the Roman galleys, or even the Phoenico-Carthaginian fleets. The Periplus of Himilco was not more perilous than the Periplus of Hanno, and the Portuguese frequented the northern seas long before they had doubled Cape Horn. Bergmann had evidently no right to determine that Iceland was not “Ultima Thule,” because—(1.) The Romans were bad sailors; (2.) They were in the habit of writing “Rome—her mark” wherever they went, whereas no signs of their occupation are visible in Iceland; and (3.) Because Iceland was probably raised from the sea at the time when the Vesuvian eruption buried Herculaneum and Pompeii.

It is true that Roman remains have not yet been discovered in Iceland, but this is a negative proof which time may demolish; moreover, the same absence of traces characterises the Papar occupation which we know to have been a fact. On the other hand, Uno Von Troil speaks of a ruined castle near “Videdal” (ViÐidalr), some 200 perches in circumference, and smaller features of the same kind on the glebe of SkeggestaÐ, near Langanes. Mr Henderson[47] declares of Hrutur’s cave, or rather caves—a vast apartment 72 feet long by 24 broad and 12 high, within which is a small recess 15 feet by 9, apparently a sleeping place—that both “are said to have been cut by people in former times.”

We are, then, justified in concluding that we need no longer question with Synesius, if such a place as Thule exists, or doubt with Giraldus Cambrensis, whether it has yet been discovered. We may follow A. W. Wilhelm (Germanien, etc., 1823), and believe with the Teatro Grande Orteliano, “Islandia insula, veteribus Thyle dicta, miraculis si quÆ alia clarissima.” We may agree with Mannert that Iceland might have been discovered by Pytheas the PhocÆan, and even by the Carthaginians. We may even support what appears to be rather an extreme opinion:

“Pytheam prÆterÀ increpat Strabo ut mendacem, qui Hiberniam et Uxisamam (Ushant) ad occidentem ponit À GalliÂ, cum hÆc omnia, ait, ad Septentrionem vergant. Itaque veteres geographi HiberniÆ situm definiunt meliÙs quam scriptoris seculi aurei Augusti, Himilco et Phoenices meliÙs quam GrÆci vel Romani” (Rer. Script. Hib., prol. i., xii.).

Moreover, it appears certain that the old tradition of Thule, though different ages applied the word differently, was never completely lost; and that the Irish rediscovered the island before the eighth century, if not much earlier, when the official rediscovery dates from the ninth, and the earliest documents from the eleventh and twelfth.

The Venerable Bede (eighth century) speaks of Iceland under the name of Thyle, more than a hundred years before its official discovery by the Scandinavians; and Alfred (ninth century), in his translation of Orosius (p. 31), assures us that the utmost land to the north-west of Ireland was called Thila, and that it was known to few on account of its great distance. Yet even after the occupation of Iceland by the Northmen, we find in the literary world the same vagueness which prevailed in earlier ages. For instance, Isaac Tzetzes (twelfth century), in his notes on Lycophron, calls the fabled Fortunate Islands of the Greeks “the Isle of Souls, a British island between the west of Britain and Thule towards the east,” which is impossible. But in the fifteenth century Petrarch has left us a valuable notice of the knowledge then familiar to men of letters (De Situ InsulÆ Thules, epist. i., lib. iii., De Rebus Fam., vol. i., pp. 136-141, ed. 1869, J. Fracassetti, Le Monnier. Florentia). In reply to his own “QuÆro quiÂnam mundi parte Thule sit insula?” he quotes Virgil, Seneca, Boethius, Solinus, Isidore, Orosius, Claudian, Pliny, and Mela. He could obtain no information from “Riccardo, quondam Anglorum regis cancellario”—Richard de Bury was probably too busy for such trifles. He learned something, however, from the “Libellus de Mirabilibus HiberniÆ, À Giraldo (Cambrensi) quodam aulico Henrici secundi, regis Anglorum.” And after quoting this “scriptorum cohors,” he thus ends with “pointing a moral”—“Lateat ad aquilonem Thyle, lateat ad austrum Nili caput, modÒ non lateat in medio consistens virtus,” etc.[48]

Icelandic Thule was advocated by Saxo Grammaticus; but his opinion was strongly opposed by his commentator (Johannis Stephanii, NotÆ Uberiores in Hist. Dan. Sax. Gram. SorÆ, ed. 1644, fol.). The words of the latter’s preface are—“Ex opinione magis vulgari, quam rei veritate Thylenses ubique nominat Saxo, qui Islandi rectius dicerentur;” but he relies chiefly upon the controvertible arguments of “Arngrimus Jonas.” Iceland was opposed by Gaspar Peucerus (De TerrÆ Dim.), by Crantzius (PrÆfatio in Norvagiam, borrowed from Nicolaus Synesius, epist. 148); by Abraham Ortelius (Theatrum Orbis and Thesaurum Geographicum), and by Philippus Cluverus (Germania Antiqua). The globe of Martin Behaim (A.D. 1430-1506) shows a certain knowledge of details: “In Iceland fair men are found who are Christians. The custom of its inhabitants is to sell dogs at a very high rate; while they willingly part with some of their children to merchants for nothing, that they may have sufficient to support the remainder. Item.—In Iceland are found men eighty years old who have never tasted bread. In this country no corn grows, and in lieu of bread dried fish is eaten. In Iceland it is the stock fish is taken which is brought to our country.”

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