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Thule (, ''Thoúlē'') was a far-northern location in classical European literature and cartography. Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by ''Thule'' often identify it as Norway,〔http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0862120#m_en_gb0862120〕〔Bostock & Riley (1893) page 352 (on "Chapter 30 (16) – Britannia") assert: "Opinions as to the identity of ancient Thule have been numerous in the extreme." The notes on Book IV of Pliny in an 1829 translation into French by Ajasson de Grandsagne mention six, which are taken word-for-word in translation by Bostock & Riley (their words in quotes): ― * "That Thule is the island of Iceland." Burton (1875) pages 1, 25. * "That it is either the Ferroe Group, or one of those islands." Burton pages 22–23. * "The notion of Ortelius, Farnaby, and Schœnning, that it is identical with Thylemark in Norway." Burton page 25. * "The opinion of Malte Brun, that the continental portion of Denmark is meant thereby, a part of which is to the present day called Thy or Thyland." Fotheringham (1862) page 497. * "The opinion of Rudbeck and of Calstron, borrowed originally from Procopius, that this is a general name for the whole of Scandinavia." Grandsagne (1829) page 338: "L'idée de Rudbeck ... et de Calstron ... due originairement à Procope, qui ... a prononcé nettement que sous ce nom était comprise toute la Scandinavie." The reference is to Procopius Book III No. 4. * "That of Gosselin, who thinks that under this name Mainland, the principal of the Shetland Islands, is meant. The reference to "Gosselin" or elsewhere "M. Gosselin" and his monumental work dating from the time of the French Revolution is much copied even though miscited. No such geographer existed; the "M." must stand for ''Monsieur''. The Library of Congress catalog cites the work as: This four-volume work is rare and inaccessible today. The opinion is said to come from Volume I page 162 under the title ''Thulé''. Bostock and Riley continue: "It is by no means impossible that under the name of Thule two or more of these localities may have been meant, by different authors writing at distant periods and under different states of geographical knowledge. It is also pretty generally acknowledged, as Parisot remarks, that the Thule mentioned by Ptolemy is identical with Thylemark in Norway."〕 an identification supported by modern calculations.〔 Other interpretations include Orkney, Shetland, and Scandinavia. In the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Thule was often identified as Iceland or Greenland. Another suggested location is Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea.〔 * 〕 The term ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world". Sometimes it is used as a proper noun (''Ultima Thule'') as the Latin name for Greenland when ''Thule'' is used for Iceland. ==Ancient geography== The Greek explorer Pytheas is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, ''On the Ocean'', after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC. He supposedly was sent out by the Greek city of Massalia to see where their trade-goods were coming from.〔L. Sprague de Camp (1954). ''Lost Continents'', p. 57.〕 Descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in the works of later, often skeptical, authors. Polybius in his ''Histories'' (c. 140 BC), Book XXXIV, cites Pytheas as one "who has led many people into error by saying that he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, giving the island a circumference of forty thousand stadia, and telling us also about Thule, those regions in which there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but a sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of a jellyfish in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak."〔Polybius. (''Book XXXIV, 5, 3'' )〕 Strabo in his ''Geography'' (c. 30), (Book I, Chapter 4 ), mentions Thule in describing Eratosthenes' calculation of "the breadth of the inhabited world" and notes that Pytheas says it "is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea." But he then doubts this claim, writing that Pytheas has "been found, upon scrutiny, to be an arch falsifier, but the men who have seen Britain and Ierne (Ireland) do not mention Thule, though they speak of other islands, small ones, about Britain." Strabo adds the following in (Book II, Chapter 5 ): Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic Circle. But from the other writers I learn nothing on the subject – neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes the Arctic Circle. Strabo ultimately concludes, in (Book IV, Chapter 5, ) "Concerning Thule, our historical information is still more uncertain, on account of its outside position; for Thule, of all the countries that are named, is set farthest north." Nearly a half century later, in 77, Pliny the Elder published his ''Natural History'' in which he also cites Pytheas' claim (in Book II, Chapter 75) that Thule is a six-day sail north of Britain. Then, when discussing the islands around Britain in (Book IV, Chapter 16 ), he writes: "The farthest of all, which are known and spoke of, is Thule; in which there be no nights at all, as we have declared, about mid-summer, namely when the Sun passes through the sign Cancer; and contrariwise no days in mid-winter: and each of these times they suppose, do last six months, all day, or all night." Finally, in refining the island's location, he places it along the most northerly parallel of those he describes, writing in (Book VI, Chapter 34, ): "Last of all is the Scythian parallel, from the Rhiphean hills into Thule: wherein (as we said) it is day and night continually by turns (for six months)." The Roman geographer Pomponius Mela placed Thule north of Scythia.〔''De Situ Orbis'', III, 57.〕 When scientists of the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science of the Technical University of Berlin were testing the antique maps of Ptolemy, they recognized a pattern of calculation mistakes which occurred if one tried to convert the old coordinates from Ptolemy into modern geographical coordinates. After correcting for the mistakes, the scientists mapped Ptolemy's Thule to the Norwegian island Smøla.〔Andreas Kleineberg, Christian Marx, Eberhard Knobloch und Dieter Lelgemann: ''Germania und die Insel Thule. Die Entschlüsselung von Ptolemaios' „Atlas der Oikumene“.'' Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2010.〕 Other late classical writers and post-classical writers such as Orosius (384-420 A.D) and the Irish monk Dicuil (late 8th and early 9th century), describe Thule as being North and West of both Ireland and Britain. Dicuil described Thule as being beyond islands that seem to be the Faroes, strongly suggesting Iceland. In the writings of the historian Procopius, from the first half of the 6th century, Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by twenty-five tribes. It is believed that Procopius is really talking about a part of Scandinavia, since several tribes are easily identified, including the Geats (Gautoi) in present-day Sweden and the Saami (Scrithiphini). He also writes that when the Heruls returned, they passed the Varni and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thule」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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