Thule

Thule is a legendary land described in Classical Greek literature as being to the far north of Europe. The name was applied to ancient lands in the fiction of Lovecraft Circle writers Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, and its role in the Cthulhu Mythos was systematised in the tales of Lin Carter.
==In Classical Literature==
Thule was first mentioned by Pytheas, the first documented representative of the Mediterranean world to visit the British Isles.Wikipedia, "Pytheas." Pytheas' writings do not survive, but he is cited by Strabo as describing Thoulē as an island six days' sail from Britain, near the frozen sea. Pliny, also citing Pytheas, said there was no night in Tyle in midsummer--suggesting that it was on the Arctic Circle. Later writers speculated that Pytheas might have been referring to Iceland or Norway, among other places.Wikipedia, "Thule."
The Roman poet Vergil refers in his Georgics to Ultima Thule--"farthest Thule"--which became an expression for any place beyond the known world.
==Clark Ashton Smith==
In Smith's "The Double Shadow," a short story published in 1933 and set in the Atlantean remnant of Poseidonis, the narrator Pharpetron wishes that his master, the sorceror Avyctes, "had contented himself with the lore preserved from Atlantis and Thule, or brought over from Mu and Mayapan." He notes that "this should have been enough: for in the ivory-sheeted books of Thule there were blood-writ runes that would call the demons of the fifth and seventh planets, if spoken aloud at the hour of their ascent."
In Smith's "Ubbo-Sathla" (1933), the protagonist Paul Tregardis is told that a crystal offered for sale, found by a geologist in Greenland, "may have belonged to some sorcerer of primeval Thule." Tregardis, a student of The Book of Eibon, links Thule to "Mhu Thulan, that northern portion of ancient Hyperborea, [that] was supposed to have corresponded roughly with Modern Greenland."
Mhu Thulan is mentioned in Smith's Hyperborean stories, including "The Coming of the White Worm" and "The Door to Saturn."
==Robert E. Howard==
Howard set his Kull stories in the Thurian Age, the pre-Cataclysmic period that preceded the Hyborian Age familiar from Conan. In the map of the continent of Thuria, Thule is the northernmost peninsula, in the approximate location of Scandinavia on the Eurasian continent. It is to the north of Valusia and west of Commoria.
==Fictional History==
Originally the prehuman civilisation of Ultima Thule was inhabited by the pre-human ancestors and the Voormi, before being colonised by survivors from Zobna. Thule was overwhelmed by the same ice-sheet which destroyed Hyperborea. Survivors from Thule founded an new colony in the northern part of the Thurian Continent until the ice-sheet retreated, when some of them returned to the island.
== References ==
Category:Locations Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Regions/Territories
Category:Locations Incorporated From Folklore, Myth & Religion