Thule
Terra Phantasma: Edition IV
Welcome to Cosmographia. This post is part of our Terra Phantasma series, where we venture in search of the mysterious ‘phantom lands’ that have appeared on maps through the ages. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.
Or as the boundless ocean's God thou come,
Sole dread of seamen, till far Thule bow
Before thee…
— Virgil, Georgics I (29 BC)
The sun hung fat and red in a sky the colour of beaten bronze. Pytheas stood at the prow of his vessel with eyes fixed on the thin vibrating line of the horizon. Somewhere out there the known world ended. What was beyond none knew.
From Massalia they had come, this gang of seafarers, their Greek tongues tasting now of Gaulish wines and Iberian olives. Past the the Carthaginian blockade and on through the Pillars of Hercules this merry band had slipped, heeding nought of the warning carved into those stony sentinels: Ne plus ultra — nothing further beyond.
They sailed north, always north, the stars wheeling overhead in patterns strange and new. The coast of Celtica slid by, a smear of green and brown, the air growing colder with each league.
At Corbilo they heard tales of the tin islands — the Cassiterides — that lay beyond. Men with eyes the colour of winter skies spoke of beaches strewn with metal and scuttling savages painted blue as the sea itself. Implacable Pytheas took on these stories mild and mute, thinking only of the lands beyond the known.
They pressed on, the ship’s timbers groaning beneath them like the bones of some ancient beast. The waters darkened, roiling with creatures unseen. The men whispered of krakens and the ghosts of drowned sailors, but Pytheas paid them no heed. His gaze was fixed always on the north.
Albion rose before them, a wall of white cliffs like the ramparts of some long ruined fortress. They made landfall, trading wine and cloth for tin and tales. The natives spoke of a great island further still, where the sun vanished for days on end and the very air froze in men’s lungs. It’s the edge of the world, they said. Last stop on the road to nowhere.
Of where do you speak, demanded the Greeks and at that the lumbering blue giant who seemed their leader spat onto that chalky beach and notioned headwise to the north.
I tell of Thule.