See also: Thulé

Thulé (in Greek old Θούλη / Thoùle ) is the name given by the Greek navigator Pythéas to an island reached between 330 and 320 av. J. - C. which it presents like the last of the British archipelago and septentrional limit of its tour. It would be probably about the Iceland, perhaps of the Faroe Islands, the Greenland or the north of the Norway (Hålogaland).

Pythéas indicates (according to Strabon, Géographie , I, 4) to have reached Thulé after six days of navigation since the Shetland Islands. It described it, with latitudes close to the polar circle, like an inhabited island where one practices the culture of corn and the beekeeping. The nights of summer would last only two to three hours. After one day of navigation towards north, he claims to have reached the Banquise.

The term of Thule figure in particular in the Enéïde of the Roman poet Virgile. Among Romans Extrema Thule indicates the limit septentrional of the known world. During the medieval time, Ultima Thule is sometimes used as the Latin name of Greenland when Thule is used to indicate him Iceland.

At the 20th century, the Nazis and the Extrème right-hand side (whose French writer Jean Mabire) associates Thulé with the mythical continent of Hyperborée that they regard as the “cradle” of the Aryan Race.