[960] My view coincides, in regard to the identification of Thule, with that of G. Hergt (Die Nordlandfahrt des Pytheas, 1894), and also with that of M. Camille Jullian (Journ. des Savants, 1905, pp. 95, n. 1, 101, n. 2). Hergt’s work is not in the British Museum, and I have not been able to procure a copy; but his conclusions are summarized in Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft, 1895, iii, 167. He and M. Jullian (op. cit., p. 101) hold that Pytheas landed in Norway, and that the Norwegians with whom he conversed pointed out to him in the distance ‘le lieu mystérieux où le soleil repose durant les longues nuits du cercle polaire’. On this theory I cannot conceive how Pytheas came to regard Thule as one of the British Isles.
Müllenhoff, who identifies Thule with Mainland, argues, first (Deutsche Altertumskunde, i, 1890, pp. 387-8) that Pytheas would hardly have succeeded in sailing to Norway in six days on account of difficulties, which he points out, in navigation; secondly (p. 393), that Pytheas, who distinguished between the Celtic and the Germanic populations of Northern Europe and must have been accompanied by an interpreter, would not have confounded Norway—a non-Celtic country—with Thule; thirdly (pp. 398-9), that agriculture was introduced into Norway by the Germans, that Pytheas, in his description of Britain and of Thule, did not say that corn was not cultivated there, and that, if he had visited Norway, he would have mentioned the Lapps and the reindeer; and lastly (pp. 399-400), that the place where ‘the barbarians’ showed him ‘the sleeping-place of the sun’ was evidently the most northerly land which he reached, and was not in the Arctic Circle.
Every one of these arguments rests upon the assumption that Pytheas visited Thule, for which, as we have seen, there is no evidence. Neither is there any that Thule was inhabited by a Celtic-speaking people: it is, as we have seen (p. 152, n. 2), absolutely certain that corn was cultivated in Scandinavia in the Bronze Age; and even if Pytheas did visit Thule, there is no reason to suppose that he went sufficiently far northward to come in contact with Lapps.
Mr. Tozer (Hist. of Anc. Geogr., pp. 159-60), who does not believe that Pytheas travelled further northward than ‘the extremity of Britain’, nevertheless holds with Müllenhoff that Thule was Mainland. He points out that ‘the sleeping-place of the sun’, which he of course locates in Thule, was in the Arctic Circle. ‘This of course,’ he continues, ‘would not apply to Shetland ... but on such a question the report of “barbarians” could hardly be expected to be accurate.’ Is not this a weak argument for identifying Thule with Mainland, where, even at the winter solstice, the sun is above the horizon five hours out of the twenty-four? The ‘barbarians’ had not themselves penetrated within the Arctic Circle; and that darkness was anywhere continuous for twenty-four hours would not have occurred to them if they had not learned the fact from Scandinavian sailors who had seen the phenomenon or had been informed of it by eye-witnesses. Moreover, Pytheas, who so accurately determined the latitude of Massilia, would hardly have allowed himself to be persuaded that Mainland was on the Arctic Circle.
[961] See, however, pp. 410, 449, infra.
[962] See pp. 232-3, infra.
[963] See Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age (Brit. Museum), p. 87, and Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age, p. xii. Hallstattian objects are also very rare in Northern Gaul (Rev. de synthèse hist., iii, 1901, p. 38, n. 1).
[964] See pp. 411-2, 445-6, 449, infra.
[965] See A. Pitt-Rivers, Excavations in Cranborne Chase, i, 163, ii, 179-87, iv, 11, 13, 61, and Proc. Somerset Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc., li, 1905, p. 26.
[966] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxv, 1905, p. 262.