“The following islands lie near Albion off the Orcadian Cape; the island of Ocitis (32° 40′ E. long., 60° 45′ N. lat.), the island of Dumna (30° E. long., 61° N. lat.), north of them the Orcades, about thirty in number, of which the most central lies in 30° E. long., 61° 40′ N. lat. And far to the north of them Thule, the most western part of which lies in 29° E. long., 63° N. lat., the most eastern part in 31° 40′ E. long., 63° N. lat., the most northern in 30° 20′ E. long., 63° 15′ N. lat., the most southern in 30° 20′ E. long., 62° 40′ N. lat., and the central part in 30° 20′ E. long., 63° N. lat.”
Ptolemy calculates his degrees of longitude eastwards from a meridian 0 which he draws west of the Fortunate Isles (the Canaries), the most western part of the earth. It will be seen that he gives Thule no very great extent. His removing it from the Arctic Circle south to 63° is doubtless due to the men of Agricola’s fleet having thought they had sighted Thule north of the Orkneys. In his eighth book [c. 3] he says:
Thule has a longest day of twenty hours, and it is distant west from Alexandria two hours. Dumna has a longest day of nineteen hours, and is distant westward two hours.
It is evident that these “hours” are found by calculation, and are merely a way of expressing degrees of latitude and longitude; they cannot therefore be referred to any local observation of the length of the longest day, etc. It is curious that Ptolemy only mentions Ebudes and Orcades, and not the Shetland Isles; perhaps they are included among his thirty Orcades.
The northern part of Ptolemy’s map of the world, Europe and Asia.
From the Rome edition of Ptolemy of 1490 (Nordenskiöld, 1889)
He represents the Cimbrian Peninsula (Jutland) with remarkable correctness, though making it lean too much towards the east, like Scotland. Upon it “dwelt on the west the Sigulones, then the Sabalingii, then the Cobandi, above them the Chali, and above these again and farther west the Phundusii, and more to the east the Charudes [Harudes or Horder; cf. [p. 85]], and to the north of all the Cimbri.” It was suggested above ([p. 94]) that possibly the name Cobandi might be connected with the Codanus of Mela and Pliny. The Sabalingii, according to Much [1905, p. 11], may be the same name as Pytheas’s Abalos (cf. [p. 70]), which may have been written Sabalos or Sabalia, and may have been inhabited by Aviones. To the north of the Cimbrian Chersonese Ptolemy places three islands, the “Alociæ,” which may be taken from the Halligen islands, properly “Hallagh” [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 61], off the coast of Sleswick.[125]
To the east of the peninsula are the four so-called “Scandiæ,” three small [the Danish islands], of which the central one lies in 41° 30′ E. long., 58° N. lat.; but the largest and most eastern lies off the mouths of the Vistula; the westernmost part of this island lies in 43° E. long., 58° N. lat., the easternmost in 46° E. long., 58° N. lat., the northernmost in 44° 30′ E. long., 58° 30′ N. lat., the southernmost in 45° E. long., 57° 40′ N. lat. But this one [i.e., south Scandinavia] is called in particular Scandia, and the western part of it is inhabited by the Chædini, the eastern by the Phavonæ and Phiresii, the northern by the Phinni, the southern by the Gutæ and Dauciones, and the central by the Levoni.