page_title: Hyperborea
section_title: From east to west: Celts as Hyperboreans
hierarchical_section_title: Hyperborea / Legends / From east to west: Celts as Hyperboreans
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Europe by Abraham Ortelius (Title:Europae) Name of map : Europae Cartographer : Ortelius (1527-1598) Map number : Ort 4; (Koeman Atlantes Neerlandici III):5 Copy from edition: 1571 Latin; Page signature: 5 Estimated number of copies printed: 3025 Estimated number of loose copies in circulation: 165 Area displayed : Europe, Iceland, part of Greenland, North Africa, Western part of Middle East; Plate size : 347 x 469 mm; Paper size : 385 x 548 mm; Margins, left : 40 mm, right: 39 mm; upper : 35 mm, lower: 6 mm; Paper thickness and quality: very heavy and strong; Paper color : off white; Age of map color: later coloring, expertly executed
context_page_description: In Greek mythology the Hyperboreans were a race of giants who lived "beyond the North Wind". The Greeks thought that Boreas, the god of the North Wind lived in Thrace, and therefore Hyperborea indicates that it is a region beyond Thrace.
  This land was supposed to be perfect, with the sun shining twenty-four hours a day, which to modern ears suggests a possible location within the Arctic Circle during the midnight sun-time of year. It is also possible that Hyperborea had no real physical location at all, for according to the classical Greek poet Pindar, "neither by ship nor on foot would you find the marvellous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans."
  Pindar also described the otherworldly perfection of the Hyperboreans:
  Never the Muse is absent
  from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry
  and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.
  Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed
  in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live.
context_section_description: Six classical Greek authors also came to identify these mythical people at the back of the North Wind with their Celtic neighbours in the north: Antimachus of Colophon, Protarchus, Heraclides Ponticus, Hecataeus of Abdera, Apollonius of Rhodes and Posidonius of Apamea. The way the Greeks understood their relationship with non-Greek peoples was significantly moulded by the way myths of the Golden Age were transplanted into the contemporary scene, especially in the context of Greek colonisation and trade. As the Riphean mountains of the mythical past were identified with the Alps of northern Italy, there was at least a geographic rationale for identifying the Hyperboreans with the Celts living in and beyond the Alps, or at least the Hyperborean lands with the lands inhabited by the Celts. A reputation for feasting and a love of gold may have reinforced the connection.
  In Ireland, however, the Celts had their own legends of an advanced civilization in the far north. The Book of Invasions records that this civilization was established by migrants from Ireland, whose descendants returned to settle Ireland several centuries later:
  
   
  Bethach son of Iarbonel the Soothsayer son of Nemed: his descendants went into the northern islands of the world to learn druidry and heathenism and diabolical knowledge, so that they became expert in all the arts. And their descendants were the Tuatha De Danann ... These latter acquired knowledge and science and diabolism in four cities: Failias, Goirias, Findlias and Muirias ... Thereafter the Tuatha De Danann came to Ireland, without ships, passing through the air in dark clouds.
caption: Map by Abraham Ortelius, Amsterdam 1572: at the top left Oceanvs Hyperborevs separates Iceland from Greenland
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