Introduction to Hyperborea

As first described by Greek writers almost 3,000 years ago, Hyperborea is said to be a legendary land in the far north, with Hyperborea meaning “beyond Boreas;” Boreas being the Greek god of the north wind. According to legend, this was a land with absolutely unique geographic, climatological, and astronomic features, inhabited by a race of long-lived, culturally advanced, solar-worshiping people; the Hyperboreans.

Curiously, and something that remains unexplained to this day, it is not just the ancient Greeks that made catalog of these northern Hyperboreans; in fact, numerous cultures across the ancient world share very similar descriptions of these northern people, their society, and the geographic region in which they were said to have lived. It is commonly speculated that the legends and myths of these ancient cultures, to some degree, may have originated from historical events or historical personages, and that the details and specifics of these events may become exaggerated as time unfolded, but that a discernible amount of truth and fact can still be found in these legends of antiquity. This method of looking back on the tales of old as if they may be reflections of reality is called “Euhemerism,” named after the Greek mythographer Euhemerus of the 4th century B.C., who sought to make sense of the stories that manifested before his time, almost 2,500 years ago. In that regard, we adopt the role of a modern day Euhemerus, seeking to discern truth from the legends that come from before our time. With this approach we might ask three questions:

Was Hyperborea real?
Where was Hyperborea?
Who were the Hyperboreans?

To that end, the purpose of this Substack is to construct a Hyperborean profile and to answer these questions; if they can be answered at all. In this endeavor, we look not just to the realm of ancient myth and legend, but also to the realm of modern science. In the modern era, our understanding of the physical world has far surpassed what our ancient ancestors could have ever imagined, which gives us a rich and substantive lens with which to explore the substance behind many of the things that they wrote. By means of extracting information from ancient sources, then cross referencing this information with what we now know to be categorically true, as a consequence of modern scientific inquiry, we can convincingly discern between myths that are entirely fictional and unfounded, and myths that are Euhemeristically grounded in reality.