Colleagues,
a few weeks ago I sent a query about Thule. I thought that some of
you might be interested in a composite of the answers I received.
Thule is:
a) the northernmost European island, according to Pytheas (310
BC), which is taken to be anything from Foula in the Shetlands to
the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and possibly even western Norway;
b) the name given to an Arctic Inuit civilisation that appears to have
existed from ca. 2000 years ago to ca. 400 years ago and to have
stretched from Alaska to Greenland;
c) a king in a poem by Goethe;
d) the name of a district in today's western Greenland;
e) this latter is apparently also the location of a large US military
base which is currently on a heightened state of alert because of
reported activity by the Inuit Liberation Front, who are, it seems,
confusing everyone by growing long beards and alternating between
white sheets and eighteenth-century top hats on their heads. The
result is that they are invisible one day and look like penguins that
got lost the next.
And it's only Wednesday.
Pól.
Dr Pol O Dochartaigh
Senior Lecturer in German
School of Languages and Literature
Faculty of Arts
University of Ulster
Coleraine
Co. Derry
BT52 1SA
Tel: +44 (0)28 - 7032 4548
Fax: +44 (0)28 - 7032 4962
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.ulst.ac.uk/faculty/humanities/lang+lit/modlangs/odochart.html
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