Hyperborea

In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans (Ancient Greek: ὑπερβόρε(ι)οι, romanized: hyperbóre(i)oi, pronounced [hyperbóre(ː)oi̯]; Latin: Hyperborei) were a mythical people who lived in the far northern part of the known world. Their name appears to derive from the Greek ὑπέρ Βορέᾱ, "beyond Boreas" (the god of the north wind). Some scholars prefer a derivation from ὑπερφέρω (hyperpherō, "to carry over"). Despite their location in an otherwise frigid part of the world, the Hyperboreans were believed to inhabit a sunny, temperate, and divinely blessed land. In many versions of the story, they lived north of the Riphean Mountains, which shielded them from the effects of the cold north wind. The oldest myths portray them as the favorites of Apollo, and some ancient Greek writers regarded the Hyperboreans as the mythical founders of Apollo's shrines at Delos and Delphi. Later writers disagreed on the existence and location of the Hyperboreans, with some regarding them as purely mythological, and others connecting them to real-world peoples and places in northern Eurasia (e.g. Britain, Scandinavia, or Siberia). In medieval and Renaissance literature, the Hyperboreans came to signify remoteness and exoticism. Modern scholars consider the Hyperborean myth to be an amalgam of ideas from ancient utopianism, "edge of the earth" stories, the cult of Apollo, and exaggerated reports of phenomena in northern Europe (e.g. the Arctic "midnight sun"). Greeks initially used the term Hyperborei Montes to denote a mythical mountain range in the far north, associated with the Hyperborea, but later ancient geographers applied it to actual mountain ranges, including the Caucasus, the Ural Mountains and the Rhipaei Montes.