The Hyperboreans and Their Connection with Apollo

Apple Tree in Blossom by Larsson (before 1919)

In the 5th century BCE Herodotus wrote of the Hyperboreans, a word which literally means “over Boreas”. Boreas is the Hellenic God of the north wind, sometimes conceived of as living in Thrace, which is more or less the land we now call Bulgaria. Herodotus described the Hyperboreans thus:

“A man of Proconnesus [a Greek town in modern day NW Turkey], one Aristeas … came to the Issedones [ancient people who lived in central Asia] and, being inspired by Apollo, wrote a poem in which he declared that above the Issedones there lived a tribe of Arimaspians, being men with one eye, and, above these, the griffins [birds sacred to Apollo] that guard the gold, and, above these, the Hyperboreans, whose land reaches to the sea. All of these people, beginning with the Arimaspians and excepting only the Hyperboreans, continually make war upon their neighbours. The Issedones, say Aristeas, were thrust out of their lands by the Arimaspians, the Scythians [ancient people who lived in and around Crimea] by the Issedones, and the Cimmerians [ancient people who lived north of the Caucasus], living by the southern sea, being hard pressed by the Scythians, also left their country …

Considering the Hyperboreans, then, the Scythians have nothing to tell, nor do any of the other people who live in those parts, except, perhaps for the Issedones … But Hesiod does talk about the Hyperboreans, and so does Homer …

But far the most that is told about these people comes from the Delians [of the Greek island Delos, said to be the birthplace of Apollo and his twin sister Artemis]. These say that holy offerings come wrapped in wheat straw from the Hyperboreans into Scythia, and, after the Scythians, each of their neighbours successively forwards these offerings to the point furthest west, at the Adriatic, and, as they conveyed to the south, the people of the Dodona [in NW Greece, a location sacred to Zeus and which had a famous oracle] are the first Greeks to receive them, and from there they … are carried … from city to city … to Tenos, and the Tenians carry them to Delos. That is how, they say, the offerings get to Delos. They say too that on the first journey the Hyperboreans sent, to bring the offerings, two girls, whom the Delians call Hyperoche and Laodice. With them, for safety’s sake, the Hyperboreans sent along with them five men as escort, citizens of their own, those who are now called Peripherees and have great honour in Delos. But when those whom the Hyperboreans sent did not come home again, the Hyperboreans made a great outcry that it should always be their lot to send out men who never came back; and so they have the offerings borne, wrapped in wheaten straw, to their borders and bid their neighbours convey them from their own land to the next. And so, they say, by this form of constant escort the offerings come to Delos. I myself know of something like this done with offerings; for the Thracian and Paeonian women [from north of Greece], when they sacrifice to Queen Artemis, have their offerings packed in wheat straw.

This, too, I know that they do: girls and boys at Delos cut their hair in honour of the Hyperborean girls who died at Delos. The girls before marriage cut off a tress of their hair and, winding it about a spindle, lay it on the tomb. The tomb is on the left hand side as you go into the temple of Artemis, and an olive tree grows over it. The Delian boys, too, twine some of their locks of hair around a green stalk, and they likewise put this on the tomb.

These, then, have this honour from the inhabitants of Delos. But these same inhabitants of Delos say that Arge and Opis, being maids, came to Delos from the Hyperboreans and travelled through the same peoples on the way, and that this was before Hyperoche and Laodice. The two latter, indeed, came bringing tribute that they were assessed to pay, for ease of childbirth [of Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis], to Eileithyia [the Goddess of childbirth]; but Arge and Opis, say the Delians, came with the Gods themselves, and other honours were granted them by the people of Delos. The Delian women, they say, collected gifts for them. It was from Delos that the islanders and Ionians learned to sing in honour of Opis and Arge, calling them by these names and collecting gifts for them … It is said, too, that when the thigh bones are burnt upon the altar, the ashes are used up by casting them on the graves of Opis and Arge. This grave of the two girls is behind the temple of Artemis, to the east [note that the maid Opis features in the story of the death of the hunter Orion – Artemis shot an arrow into his head after Apollo told her he was “a villain … who has just seduced Opis, one of your Hyperborean princesses”: R Graves, Greek Myths at 61] …

That is now enough said about the Hyperboreans, for I will not tell that tale of the man called Abaris the Hyperborean – that he carried an arrow round the whole Earth without eating anything at all … [Herodotus, The History at 4.13-4.36]”

A modern description of the Hyperboreans is thus:

“… After Apollo’s birth, he flew with his team of swans to the land of the Hyperboreans where he remained until he made his ceremonial entrance into Delphi [the location of his most famous oracle]. For nineteen years he returned to this land … Each night between the vernal equinox and the rising of the Pleiades he could be heard singing hymns and playing his lyre.

After Apollo had massacred the Cyclops, he hid the arrow he had used in a temple in the main Hyperborean city. The arrow flew there of its own accord, before forming the constellation of Sagittarius. A Hyperborean called [Abaris] travelled throughout the world borne by this arrow …

Leto was … born in the land of the Hyperboreans, and the sacred objects pertaining to Apollo which were venerated at Delos were said to have come from there …

The Delphic Oracle was reputedly established by a Hyperborean called Olen. When the Gauls attacked Delphi, two phantoms appeared to them; these were the Hyperborean heroes Hyperochus … and Laodocus …

The Hyperboreans also figure in the myths of Perseus and Heracles. Their country had a mild climate, inhabited by people with happy temperaments … The Hyperboreans knew of magic; they could travel in the air and find hidden treasure [Dictionary of Classical Mythology at 209]”.

Everything about the Hyperboreans appears to be connected in some way with Apollo. Delos and Delphi were major sites of pilgrimage throughout the Greco-Roman period and both sites strengthened their legitimacy by claiming connection with Hyperborea (thus Apollo). Even a shrine to Apollo in ancient Italy could claim a connection with Hyperborea, as Herodotus recounts:

“… The Metapontines [of Metapontum – a city in southern Italy that flourished from around the 7th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE; Pythagoras died there circa 500 BCE] say that Aristeas [who had travelled to Hyperborea] appeared in their country and bade them establish an altar to Apollo and set beside it a statue of Aristeas … For Aristeas said to them that they were the only Greeks living in Italy whose country Apollo had come and that he himself – who was now Aristeas – had followed him; but then, at the time he had followed the God, he was a crow [Herodotus, The History at 4.15] …”

Pliny the Elder wrote of the Hyperboreans in his Natural History in the 1st century CE:

“Behind these mountains [near Scythia], and beyond the region of the northern winds, there dwells, if we choose to believe it, a happy race, known as the Hyperborei, a race that lives to an extreme old age, and which has been the subject of many marvellous stories. At this spot are supposed to be the hinges upon which the world revolves, and the extreme limits of the revolutions of the stars. Here we find light for six months together, given by the sun in one continuous day … to these people there is but one rising of the sun for the year, and that at the summer solstice, and but one setting, at the winter solstice. This region, warmed by the rays of the sun, is of a most delightful temperature, and exempt from every noxious blast. The abodes of the natives are the woods and groves; the Gods receive their worship singly and in groups, while all discord and every kind of sickness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them only when satiated with life; after a career of feasting, in an old age sated with every luxury, they leap from a certain rock there into the sea; and this they deem the most desirable mode of ending existence. Some writers have placed these people, not in Europe, but at the very verge of the shores of Asia, because we find there a people called the Attacori, who greatly resemble them and occupy a very similar locality … Nor are we at liberty to entertain any doubts as to the existence of this race; so many authors are there who assert that they were in the habit of sending their first-fruits to Delos to present them to Apollo, whom in especial they worship … However, this custom, even, in time fell into disuse [Book 4, Ch 26]”.

Hyperborea seems to have been sort of like the Shangri-La of the Greco-Roman world. It is as if it still lived within the golden age of man, as described by Ovid:

“Golden, that first age … of its own will, uncoerced, fostered responsibility and virtue: men had no fear of any punishment, nor did they read of threatened penalties … As yet no pine tree on its mountaintop had been chopped down … the earth … untaxed, she gave of herself freely, providing all the essentials … Spring was the only season that there was, and the warm breath of Zephyr stroked flowers that sprang up from the ground, unsown. Later – though still untilled – the earth bore grain, and fields … whitened with their wheat; now streams of milk, now streams of nectar flowed, and from the green oak, golden honey dripped [Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 1, lines 126-154]”.

Thus was the golden age of Saturn (Cronus to the Greeks). When Saturn was replaced by Jupiter (Zeus) the age of silver began, and spring became shorter. Then there was the age of bronze, which was “crueller by nature and much more disposed to savage warfare, but not yet corrupt” (Metamorphoses, 1.170-1). Finally, the age of iron emerged:

“… modesty, fidelity, and truth departed; in their absence, came fraud, guile, deceit, the use of violence, and shameful lusting after acquisitions … Now men demand that the rich earth provide more than the crops and sustenance it owes, and piercing to the bowels of the earth, the wealth long hidden in Stygian gloom is excavated … for iron … men live off plunder … and piety lies vanquished … Virgin Astraea, the last immortal left on the bloodstained earth, withdraws from it in horror [Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1.174-1.204]”.

This final age is a descriptor of how not to live; it is spiritual and material hell, and it contrasts beautifully with the paradise of the golden age. The golden age depicts a more perfect life, as does Hyperborea, but both are seemingly inaccessible, though Hyperborea less so. In the ancient sources there seems to be a sense that one could travel there, though it would be an extremely arduous, almost impossible, journey. The ancients thus travelled to Delphi and Delos instead, and perhaps there was a idea that through the worship of Apollo one could in some sense ascend to the higher life state of the Hyperboreans.

Apollo on Chariot by Grell (circa 1930)

If we today were to seek to somehow touch the blessed life of Hyperboreans we would presumably start with rites in honour of Apollo. Such rites might include:

1. Spending time outdoors in nature on sunny days.
2. Eating healthy, natural food – preferably organic.
3. Playing / listening to music, particularly if it sounds healthy or healing.
4. Reading, writing, memorising or reciting poetry.
5. Wearing clothes or jewellery evocative of the sun.
6. A celebratory meal with wine on each solstice and equinox.
7. Making offerings of incense and wine on 25 December (Dies Natalis Solis Invicti).
8. Creating a crown of laurel and burning it in a fire in honour of Apollo.
9. Making offerings of pastries, incense, wine, etc at a sacred location.

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Sources

• britannica.com
• Robert Graves, Greek Myths, Book Club Associates
• Pierre Grimal, Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Penguin Books
• Herodotus, The History (translated by D Grene), The University of Chicago Press
• Ovid, Metamorphoses (translated by C Martin), W W Norton & Company
• Pliny the Elder, Natural History (translated by J Bostock and H Riley), gutenberg.org
• theoi.com

Written by M' Sentia Figula (aka Freki), find me at neo polytheist and romanpagan.wordpress.com