Hyperborea

In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans were a mythical people who lived in the far northern part of the known world. Their name appears to derive from the Greek ὑπέρ Βορέᾱ, "beyond Boreas". Some scholars prefer a derivation from ὑπερφέρω.
Despite their location in an otherwise frigid part of the world, the Hyperboreans were believed to inhabit a sunny, temperate, and divinely blessed land. In many versions of the story, they lived north of the Riphean Mountains, which shielded them from the effects of the cold north wind. The oldest myths portray them as the favorites of Apollo, and some ancient Greek writers regarded the Hyperboreans as the mythical founders of Apollo's shrines at Delos and Delphi.
Later writers disagreed on the existence and location of the Hyperboreans, with some regarding them as purely mythological, and others connecting them to real-world peoples and places in northern Eurasia. In medieval and Renaissance literature, the Hyperboreans came to signify remoteness and exoticism. Modern scholars consider the Hyperborean myth to be an amalgam of ideas from ancient utopianism, "edge of the earth" stories, the cult of Apollo, and exaggerated reports of phenomena in northern Europe.
Greeks initially used the term Hyperborei Montes to denote a mythical mountain range in the far north, associated with the Hyperborea, but later ancient geographers applied it to actual mountain ranges, including the Caucasus, the Ural Mountains and the Rhipaei Montes.

Early sources

Herodotus

The earliest extant source that mentions Hyperborea in detail, Herodotus' Histories, dates from. Herodotus recorded three earlier sources that supposedly mentioned the Hyperboreans, including Hesiod and Homer, the latter purportedly having written of Hyperborea in his lost work Epigoni. Herodotus voices doubts as to the attribution of the work to Homer.
Herodotus wrote that the 7th-century BC poet Aristeas wrote of the Hyperboreans in a poem called Arimaspea about a journey to the Issedones, who are estimated to have lived in the Kazakh Steppe. Beyond these lived the one-eyed Arimaspians, further on the gold-guarding griffins, and beyond these the Hyperboreans. Herodotus assumed that Hyperborea lay somewhere in Northeast Asia.
Pindar, lyric poet from Thebes and a contemporary of Herodotus in the tenth Pythian Ode described the Hyperboreans and tells of Perseus's journey to them.
Other 5th-century BC Greek authors, such as Simonides of Ceos and Hellanicus of Lesbos, described or referenced the Hyperboreans in their works.

Location

The Hyperboreans were believed to live beyond the snowy Riphean Mountains, with Pausanias describing the location as "The land of the Hyperboreans, men living beyond the home of Boreas." Homer placed Boreas in Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea was in his opinion north of Thrace, in Dacia. Sophocles, Aeschylus, Simonides of Ceos and Callimachus also placed Boreas in Thrace.
Other ancient writers believed the home of Boreas or the Riphean Mountains were in a different location. For example, Hecataeus of Miletus believed that the Riphean Mountains were adjacent to the Black Sea. Alternatively, Pindar placed the home of Boreas, the Riphean Mountains and Hyperborea all near the Danube.
Heraclides Ponticus and Antimachus in contrast identified the Riphean Mountains with the Alps, and the Hyperboreans as a Celtic tribe who lived just beyond them. Aristotle placed the Riphean mountains on the borders of Scythia, and Hyperborea further north. Hecataeus of Abdera and others believed Hyperborea was Britain.
Later Roman and Greek sources continued to change the location of the Riphean mountains, the home of Boreas, as well as Hyperborea, supposedly located beyond them. However, all these sources agreed these were all in the far north of Greece or southern Europe. The ancient grammarian Simmias of Rhodes in the 3rd century BC connected the Hyperboreans to the Massagetae and Posidonius in the 1st century BC to the Western Celts, but Pomponius Mela placed them even further north in the vicinity of the Arctic.
In maps based on reference points and descriptions given by Strabo, Hyperborea, shown variously as a peninsula or island, is located beyond what is now France, and stretches further north–south than east–west. Other descriptions put it in the general area of the Ural Mountains.

Later classical sources

Plutarch, writing in the 1st century AD, mentions Heraclides of Ponticus, who connected the Hyperboreans with the Gauls who had sacked Rome in the 4th century BC.
Aelian, Diodorus Siculus and Stephen of Byzantium all recorded important ancient Greek sources on Hyperborea, but added no new descriptions.
The 2nd-century AD Stoic philosopher Hierocles equated the Hyperboreans with the Scythians, and the Riphean Mountains with the Ural Mountains. Clement of Alexandria and other early Christian writers also made this same Scythian equation.

Ancient identification with Britain

Hyperborea was identified with Britain first by Hecataeus of Abdera in the 4th century BC, as in a preserved fragment by Diodorus Siculus:

In the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and has an unusually temperate climate.

Hecateaus of Abdera also wrote that the Hyperboreans had on their island "a magnificent sacred precinct of Apollo and a notable temple which is adorned with many votive offerings and is spherical in shape". Some scholars have identified this temple with Stonehenge. Diodorus, however, does not identify Hyperborea with Britain, and his description of Britain makes no mention of the Hyperboreans or their spherical temple.
Pseudo-Scymnus, around 90 BC, wrote that Boreas dwelled at the extremity of Gaulish territory, and that he had a pillar erected in his name on the edge of the sea. Some have claimed this is a geographical reference to northern France, and Hyperborea as the British Isles which lay just beyond the English Channel.
Ptolemy and Marcian of Heraclea both placed Hyperborea in the North Sea which they called the "Hyperborean Ocean".
In his 1726 work on the druids, John Toland specifically identified Diodorus' Hyperborea with the Isle of Lewis, and the spherical temple with the Callanish Stones.

Legends

Along with Thule, Hyperborea was one of several terra incognita to the Greeks and Romans, where Pliny, Pindar and Herodotus, as well as Virgil and Cicero, reported that people lived to the age of one thousand and enjoyed lives of complete happiness. Hecataeus of Abdera collated all the stories about the Hyperboreans current in the 4th century BC and published a lengthy, now-lost treatise on them that was noted by Diodorus Siculus. Legend told that the sun was supposed to rise and set only once a year in Hyperborea, which would place it above or upon the Arctic Circle, or, more generally, in the arctic polar regions.
The ancient Greek writer Theopompus, in his work Philippica, claimed Hyperborea was once planned to be conquered by a large race of soldiers from another island; however, this plan was apparently abandoned, as the soldiers from Meropis realized the Hyperboreans were too strong, and too blessed, for them to be conquered. This unusual tale, which some believe was satire or comedy, was preserved by Aelian.
Theseus visited the Hyperboreans and Pindar transferred Perseus' encounter with Medusa there from its traditional site in Libya, to the dissatisfaction of his Alexandrian editors.
Apollonius wrote that the Argonauts sighted Hyperborea, when they sailed through Eridanos.

Hyperboreans in Delos

Alone among the Twelve Olympians, the Greeks venerated Apollo among the Hyperboreans, and the god was thought to spend his winters there amongst them.
According to Herodotus, offerings from the Hyperboreans came to Scythia packed with straw, and they were passed from tribe to tribe until they arrived at Dodona and from them to other Greek peoples until they to came to Apollo's temple on Delos. He said they used this method because the first time the gifts were brought by two maidens, Hyperoche and Laodice, with an escort of five men, but none of them returned. To prevent this, the Hyperboreans began to bring the gifts to their borders and ask their neighbours to deliver them to the next country and so on until they arrived to Delos.
Herodotus also details that two other virgin maidens, Arge and Opis, had come from Hyperborea to Delos before, as a tribute to the goddess Ilithyia for ease of child-bearing, accompanied by the gods themselves. The maidens received honours in Delos, where the women collected gifts from them and sang hymns to them.

Abaris the Hyperborean

A particular Hyperborean legendary healer was known as "Abaris" or "Abaris the Healer" whom Herodotus first described in his works. Plato regarded Abaris as a physician from the far north, while Strabo reported Abaris was Scythian like the early philosopher Anacharsis.

Physical appearance

Greek legend asserts that the Boreades, who were the descendants of Boreas and Chione, founded the first theocratic monarchy on Hyperborea. This legend is found preserved in the writings of Aelian:
Diodorus Siculus added to this account:
The Boreades were thus believed to be giant kings, around tall, who ruled Hyperborea. No other physical descriptions of the Hyperboreans are provided in classical sources. However, Aelius Herodianus, a grammarian in the 3rd century, wrote that the mythical Arimaspi were identical to the Hyperboreans in physical appearance and Stephanus of Byzantium in the 6th century wrote the same. The ancient poet Callimachus described the Arimaspi as having fair hair, but it is disputed whether the Arimaspi were Hyperboreans. According to Herodianus, the Arimaspi were close in appearance to the Hyperboreans, making the inference that the Hyperboreans had fair hair being potentially valid.