Ultima Thule

'Concerning Thule, our historical information is still more uncertain, on account of its outside position; for Thule, of all the countries that are named, is set farthest north. 'Strabo, Geography, 1st century BC

The term 'Ultima Thule' was used in Classical and medieval geographical writing to describe mysterious places in the distant north beyond the known world of trade, empire and civilisation. Since the first use of the concept by the Greek explorer Pytheas debate has raged as to whether the phrase refers to Norway, Greenland, Iceland, Orkney, Shetland or, perhaps more likely, an amalgam of all dimly known northern climes. Having just spent several days in the unambiguously epic and often thrillingly peculiar landscapes of Iceland I can only back its candidature to be the very embodiment of Ultima Thule.

'It is no use trying to describe it, but it was quite up to my utmost expectations as to strangeness: it is just like nothing else in the world.' 

William Morris on his first visit to Iceland (1877)

As with Morris, my words can only pale in the face of a first sighting of Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, and the other wonders of the trip, so here is a visual montage of 'the place where the sun goes to rest.' (Geminus of Rhodes, 1st century BC).

'Thule; an island in the Ocean between the northern and western zone, beyond Britain, near Orkney and Ireland; in this Thule, when the sun is in Cancer, it is said that there are perpetual days without nights.'
Servius, 4th century AD

'By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright.
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule –
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space – out of Time.'

Extract from Edgar Allan Poe's poem Dream-Land (1844)

'(Auden) said that Iceland was like the sun that had set, (but) you could see the sunshine on the mountains: Iceland followed him like that - the colours of the setting sun on the mountains. He said that he was not always thinking about Iceland ... that he was never not thinking about Iceland.'

Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell, Moon Country (1996)

Saltmarsh, Ile de Noirmoutier

A circling plain, bleached flat in wide-screen by sun and overcoming sky;

lonely home to hunting heron, bird-call and clearing thoughts.

Hum of wind-washed grasses, bent in rhythm, amplifying the calm.

An old channel, guided by memories of flow, glistens its approach; 

drifting a lazy course,

now one with my own.

Two rabbits disturb this marsh stupor:

fen-land exile from beach-side camp.

Latent yet elemental, this low place - Marais Salants - exists for salt: sluice gates alone keep out the sea's patient intent; and for these short hours, a care-less hideaway is found here.

Ile de Noirmoutier, Vendee, France

The beautiful game lives on in Ultima Thule

 I'm very much an ex football fan, jaded and disillusioned by the ridiculous grandiloquence of the professional game.

However, in remotest Ultima Thule, it seems there is a true venue for the beautiful game.

This is the home ground of IB Vestmannaeyja, a football team based on the island of Heimaey off the south coast of Iceland. Photograph from http://groundhopping.se

Landscape in Europe

Its great to hear about perspectives on landscape from outside Britain and I am grateful to Guillermo Reher for providing the following information.

Following the successful Landscape Archaeology Conference at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit in January 2010 a second conference will be held in Berlin in June at which the proceedings of LAC2010 will be presented. Though it is titled "landscape archaeology", a rich panorama of approaches will be in evidence. 

Another event, the Le:Notre conference in Antalya in April, also looks at wider landscape-related themes from a landscape architecture perspectives.

These events reflect the growing importance of inter-disciplinary landscape study in European research, illustrated by the European Science Foundation's policy briefing on Landscape in a Changing World produced by experts from different fields througout Europe.