Sunday, April 5, 2015

An "ETA" which delayed twenty three centuries



B.C. Pytheas beyond the "Borders of the Known World"



The estimated time of arrival or ETA is a measure of
when a ship is expected to arrive at a certain place. 

      PROLOGUE 

      "……. have reached these lands but newly
       From an ultimate dim Thule –"

      Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Dream-Land"
      referred “Thule”, a secret that can not stand…. 

        _________________


   We weighed anchor at dawn….
       A bunch of sullen sailors whose luck 
                                            [has gone.

       Propeller begins to revolve,
       like the problems I can't solve...
       Agitated the sea and agitated my soul,

       as we depart for "Thule", close to the 
                                                [Northern pole.

   While the Atlantic was furiously 
                            [beating us,

       a sailor, an old old cuss,
       who never and with no one ever discuss,

       says this part of the world in which we go 
                                                            [is cursed,

       and risks are everywhere… interspersed.

       There is never a dawn and the sun never 
                                                           [comes up.

       Only in the summer it comes out, says 
                                                            [cheer up,

      (drunk) and forget it going down for long.

       Scary place, the explorer Pytheas wasn’t wrong

       when he decided Thule's location to remain 
                                                                     [unknown,

       and for us, the future sailors a restricted zone…

       Goethe, in "The King in Thule" was mentioned 
                                                     [in this unknown land,

       he understood why this land is banned......

   Our ship tames the wild sea ...

       The pilot holding in his hand 
                                      [a cup of tea,

       puts us in the harbor cursing 
                                            [everyone.

      We stayed a month, never once did 
                                          [set the sun...
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Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM // 
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS

Νο: 11
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*  Pytheas,   Greek explorer. P. is the first to have written of Thule, doing so in his now lost work, On the Ocean, after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC. He supposedly was sent out by the Greek city of Massalia to see where their trade-goods were coming from.

A local stamp of Greenland 1936, inscribed Thule.
Thule (/ˈθjuːliː/; Greek: Θούλη, Thoúlē), also spelled Thula, Thila, or Thyïlea, is, in classical European literature and maps, a region in the far north. Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway, an identification supported by modern calculations. 

Other interpretations include Orkney, Shetland, and Scandinavia. In the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Thule was often identified as Iceland or Greenland. Another suggested location is Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea. The term ultima Thule in medieval geographies denotes any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world". Sometimes it is used as a proper noun (Ultima Thule) as the Latin name for Greenland when Thule is used for Iceland.

* "The King in Thule" is a German poem by Johann Wolfgang Goethe used it later 

in his tragedy Faus
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the tales of a Greek Sailor

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