Hyperborea
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Hyperborea is a fictious land that originally entered the human knowledge bank in the days of Ancient Greece, when it was invented as a mythical realm at the uttermost northern point of the world - "Hyperborea" is literally Latin for "Beyond The North Wind". It has since passed into /tg/'s lexicon largely for its association with the Sword & Sorcery universe co-written by Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, but it has a surprisingly long history in being a study of legitimate geographers and anthropologists.
It's also become associated with Neo-Nazi Mythology, specifically what Wikipedia calls "Esoteric Nazism." So yeah, that's a thing...
The Hyperborea Myth[edit | edit source]
The earliest mention of Hyperborea appears in Herodotus' Histories (Book IV, Chapters 32–36), though he references three earlier works; in general, Greecian/Hellenic legends describe Hyperborea as a terra incognita along the lines of Atlantis or Thule, said to exist at the northernmost point of the world. Blessed with the love and support of both Boreas (god of the north wind) and Apollo (god of the sun), it was a warm and sunny land surrounded by cold, dark wastes that kept its people safe from the dangers of the outer world. Its people, thanks to their divine blessings (and/or divine blood: some stories describe at least the rulers of this land as being the children of Boreas and a snow nymph, which manifested in their gargantuan stature) are said to live for centuries, even thousands of years, and be free of the cruelties of disease and aging.
Scholars & Crackpots[edit | edit source]
Later writers disagreed on the existence and location of the Hyperboreans, with some regarding them as purely mythological, and others connecting them to real-world peoples and places in northern Europe (e.g. Britain, Scandinavia, or Siberia). In medieval and Renaissance literature, the Hyperboreans came to signify remoteness and exoticism. Modern scholars consider the Hyperborean myth to be an amalgam of ideas from ancient utopianism, "edge of the earth" stories, the cult of Apollo, and exaggerated reports of phenomena in northern Europe (e.g. the Arctic "midnight sun").
Even during the time of ancient Greece, Hyperborea became increasingly associated with the Celts, including the ancestors of modern-day Scandinavians.
In modern esoteric thought, the Hyperborean people represented the Golden Age polar center of civilization and spirituality, with mankind, instead of evolving from a common ape ancestor, progressively devolving into an apelike state as a result of straying, both physically and spiritually, from its mystical otherworldly homeland in the Far North, succumbing to the 'demonic' energies of the South Pole, the greatest point of materialization.
We'll let you do the math as to how these beliefs might have intermingled with Nazi ideology. Or don't and save yourself the brainbleach.
The Hyborian Age[edit | edit source]
The Hyborian Age, a fantasy-mythical period of Earth's history that was invented by Robert E. Howard for his Sword & Sorcery novels. As literally the first officially recognized Sword & Sorcery setting ever invented, it is thusly the most famous of all. Technically speaking, Hyperborea refers to a specific continent in the Hyborian Age, but everybody recognizes Hyperborea more readily because Clark Ashton Smith wrote stories set in his buddy Howard's setting and called them "The Hyperborean Cycle".
The Hyborian Age is set in a dim and murky period in the ancient past, long after the sinking of Atlantis, yet long before the recording of modern history. It has been suggested by some of the writers whom Howard allowed to play in his sandbox that the Hyborian Age takes place at the end of the last ice age - 10,000 BC - and others still that it takes place before the last ice age, around 32,500 BC.
It is a low-magic setting; although mages and monsters certainly exist, magic is rare and requires lengthy rituals fueled by esoteric ingredients, and whilst some aliens and fiends exist, other "monsters" are implied to be merely primeval remnants of animals otherwise extinct.
The most famous figures associated with the Hyborian Age are Conan the Barbarian, Kull, and Red Sonja. It is canon to Marvel.
Hyperborea on /tg/[edit | edit source]
There have been two Dungeons & Dragons-based gamelines for Conan, a non-D&D Conan RPG, and two RPGs set in the Hyborian Age; the AD&D Retroclone Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea and the 5e-based Primeval Thule.