thule

Thule is a historical term used to denote a distant northern land in classical and medieval geographies. It originates with Pytheas of Massilia, who visited the northern seas in the 4th century BCE and described a northernmost land called Thule. From late antiquity onward, cartographers and navigators used the name as a placeholder for the edge of the known world, and the Latin phrase ultima Thule came to symbolize remote or unknown regions.

Geography has never fixed Thule to a single location; as maps evolved, scholars identified it with various northern lands—Shetland or Orkney in Britain, Iceland, or regions of Scandinavia—though the term generally referred to an area toward the polar north beyond settled Europe.

The Thule culture is an archaeological term for a prehistoric Inuit-oriented culture that arose in the Arctic in the first millennium AD and became the dominant form of Inuit culture in Greenland and much of Arctic Canada by around 1000–1500 CE. It replaced the Dorset culture and is characterized by advanced marine hunting technology, including large sea-going kayaks (qajaq), umiaks, and toggling harpoons, as well as complex coastal dwellings.

Thule also names several modern entities. The Thule Society was a German occultist and nationalist group founded in Munich in 1918; it influenced some early members of the Nazi movement. Thule Air Base is a U.S. Air Force base at Pituffik, Greenland, established in 1951. Thule is also the name of a Swedish company, Thule Group, known for outdoor equipment such as roof racks and travel gear.