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Hyperborean

In ancient times, the Hyperboreans were the "people beyond the north wind". Herodotus entirely disbelieved in the existence of Hyperboreans. Hesiod mentions the Hyperboreans, as well as Homer in the Epignoni, if indeed Homer composed that poem. The foolish etymology of the name, as if it designated those 'who live beyond the north wind' - for which Pindar and Herodotus are the earliest authorities, and which has not become wholly obsolete yet-has been answerable for much misappreciation of the real value of the facts: the Hyperborean story has either been regarded as an unaccountable dream or as a vague reminiscence of a prehistoric trade-route from the Danube regions southwards.

Herodotus states that the Hyperboreoi were mentioned by Hesiod and by the epic poet of the Epigoni: the author of the Homeric hymn to Dionysos refers to them as a definite people imagined by him perhaps as living somewhere at the circumference of the Greek world: it seems that Alcaeus conceived of them as a people living in the north of Greece, probably in the region of Tempe. It may have been in the sixth century, the flourishing period of the Ionic colonies in the Black Sea, at a time when the poetry and legends associated with the names of Aristeas and Abaris arose, that the transplantation of the Hyperboreans to the country north of Scythia, the dim land "beyond the north wind" took place.

This mysterious folk are not regarded as barbarians, and nearly all the features of their legend are marked with Apolline associations: they sacrifice asses to their god, and there is evidence suggesting that the ass was actually a sacrificial victim in the Delphic cult. They throw themselves in old age over a rock into the seac, and there is clear testimony that human sacrifices were thus devoted to Apollo at Leukas and in Cyprus. A narrative in Ovid tells us that the Hyperboreans in Pallene adorned themselves with light feathers, and then dived nine times in the Tritonian lake, and the merciful Leukadians, in later times, attached feathers to the human victim to break his fall: the Hyperboreans were long-lived according to the legend, and Pliny mentions the town of Apollonia on the summit of Mount Athos.

There seems, then, a certain method in these quaint stories, which touch at many points on real Apolline ritual. Again, ancient writers, in spite of the fallacy of Herodotus, were not always inclined to place the abode of this people in the dim background of the undiscovered north: Servius assigns them to Thrace, but earlier and better authorities speak of Thessaly, Dodonac, and Delphi as their various habitations2. Finally, their names, when the story attaches any names to them, are all Greek.

The most ancient temple of Delphi was built of laurel-wood from Tempe, according to the legend, and built by Hyperborean architects, Pagasos and Agyieus. The central point of the earliest Hyperborean or North Greek Apolline ritual was Delphi, that the sacred way from Tempe thitherward was the route of the first Hyperborean offerings, and that this may have corresponded more or less with the line of the earliest southward migrations of the worshippers of Apollo.

Hyperboreans are the various peoples inhabiting the districts in the vicinity of the North Pole, small in stature and possessing the principal characteristics of asians. The people belonging to the Hyperborean branch are nomadic, and then- only domestic animals are the dog and the reindeer. They are spread over a vast surface, but are few in number. They support themselves by hunting and fishing. They are passionately fond of strong drinks, and their civilization is of a very rudimentary character. Some of these people might perhaps be more properly classed as Mongolian. Possibly some even should be classified as Caucasian, for they have lost, under the influences of climate and of their mode of life, the distinguishing characteristics of Asians. M.D'Omalius d'Halloy distinguished, amid the people who compose the Hyperborean branch, seven families, taking the affinities of language as a basis. These are the Lapp, the Samoiede, the Kamuchadale, the Esquimaux, the Ienissian, the Jukaghirite, and the Koriak families.