It is true that Roman remains have not yet been discovered in Iceland, but this is a negative proof which time may demolish; moreover, the same absence of traces characterises the Papar occupation which we know to have been a fact. On the other hand, Uno Von Troil speaks of a ruined castle near “Videdal” (Viðidalr), some 200 perches in circumference, and smaller features of the same kind on the glebe of Skeggestað, near Langanes. Mr Henderson[47] declares of Hrutur’s cave, or rather caves—a vast apartment 72 feet long by 24 broad and 12 high, within which is a small recess 15 feet by 9, apparently a sleeping place—that both “are said to have been cut by people in former times.”
We are, then, justified in concluding that we need no longer question with Synesius, if such a place as Thule exists, or doubt with Giraldus Cambrensis, whether it has yet been discovered. We may follow A. W. Wilhelm (Germanien, etc., 1823), and believe with the Teatro Grande Orteliano, “Islandia insula, veteribus Thyle dicta, miraculis si quæ alia clarissima.” We may agree with Mannert that Iceland might have been discovered by Pytheas the Phocæan, and even by the Carthaginians. We may even support what appears to be rather an extreme opinion:
“Pytheam præterà increpat Strabo ut mendacem, qui Hiberniam et Uxisamam (Ushant) ad occidentem ponit à Galliâ, cum hæc omnia, ait, ad Septentrionem vergant. Itaque veteres geographi Hiberniæ situm definiunt meliùs quam scriptoris seculi aurei Augusti, Himilco et Phœnices meliùs quam Græci vel Romani” (Rer. Script. Hib., prol. i., xii.).
Moreover, it appears certain that the old tradition of Thule, though different ages applied the word differently, was never completely lost; and that the Irish rediscovered the island before the eighth century, if not much earlier, when the official rediscovery dates from the ninth, and the earliest documents from the eleventh and twelfth.
The Venerable Bede (eighth century) speaks of Iceland under the name of Thyle, more than a hundred years before its official discovery by the Scandinavians; and Alfred (ninth century), in his translation of Orosius (p. 31), assures us that the utmost land to the north-west of Ireland was called Thila, and that it was known to few on account of its great distance. Yet even after the occupation of Iceland by the Northmen, we find in the literary world the same vagueness which prevailed in earlier ages. For instance, Isaac Tzetzes (twelfth century), in his notes on Lycophron, calls the fabled Fortunate Islands of the Greeks “the Isle of Souls, a British island between the west of Britain and Thule towards the east,” which is impossible. But in the fifteenth century Petrarch has left us a valuable notice of the knowledge then familiar to men of letters (De Situ Insulæ Thules, epist. i., lib. iii., De Rebus Fam., vol. i., pp. 136-141, ed. 1869, J. Fracassetti, Le Monnier. Florentia). In reply to his own “Quæro quiânam mundi parte Thule sit insula?” he quotes Virgil, Seneca, Boethius, Solinus, Isidore, Orosius, Claudian, Pliny, and Mela. He could obtain no information from “Riccardo, quondam Anglorum regis cancellario”—Richard de Bury was probably too busy for such trifles. He learned something, however, from the “Libellus de Mirabilibus Hiberniæ, à Giraldo (Cambrensi) quodam aulico Henrici secundi, regis Anglorum.” And after quoting this “scriptorum cohors,” he thus ends with “pointing a moral”—“Lateat ad aquilonem Thyle, lateat ad austrum Nili caput, modò non lateat in medio consistens virtus,” etc.[48]
Icelandic Thule was advocated by Saxo Grammaticus; but his opinion was strongly opposed by his commentator (Johannis Stephanii, Notæ Uberiores in Hist. Dan. Sax. Gram. Soræ, ed. 1644, fol.). The words of the latter’s preface are—“Ex opinione magis vulgari, quam rei veritate Thylenses ubique nominat Saxo, qui Islandi rectius dicerentur;” but he relies chiefly upon the controvertible arguments of “Arngrimus Jonas.” Iceland was opposed by Gaspar Peucerus (De Terræ Dim.), by Crantzius (Præfatio in Norvagiam, borrowed from Nicolaus Synesius, epist. 148); by Abraham Ortelius (Theatrum Orbis and Thesaurum Geographicum), and by Philippus Cluverus (Germania Antiqua). The globe of Martin Behaim (A.D. 1430-1506) shows a certain knowledge of details: “In Iceland fair men are found who are Christians. The custom of its inhabitants is to sell dogs at a very high rate; while they willingly part with some of their children to merchants for nothing, that they may have sufficient to support the remainder. Item.—In Iceland are found men eighty years old who have never tasted bread. In this country no corn grows, and in lieu of bread dried fish is eaten. In Iceland it is the stock fish is taken which is brought to our country.”
THULE (ETYMOLOGY OF).
Perhaps the origin of “Thule” is ground more debatable and debated than even its geographical position.
“Some,” says Sibbald, “derive the name Thule from the Arabic word Tule (طول = Túl), which signifies ‘afar off,’ and, as it were with allusion to this, the poets usually call it ‘Ultima Thule;’ but I rather prefer the reason of the name given by the learned Bochartus,[49] who makes it to be Phœnician, and affirms that it signifies ‘darkness’ in that language. Thule (צל) in the Tyrian tongue was ‘a shadow,’ whence it is commonly used to signify ‘darkness,’ and the island Thule is as much as to say, an ‘island of darkness;’ which name how exactly it agrees to the island so called at the utmost point to the north is known to everybody.”
Others find Thule in the Carthaginian צל = “obscurity;” the Hebrew has צלל, and the Arabic ظل = obscuravit.”