Case file · Folklore / legend
Pytheas reaches Thule and the 'sea lung'
About 325 BC the Greek navigator Pytheas of Massalia sailed north of Britain and described Thule, six days' sail beyond, near a 'congealed sea' where earth, sea and air merged into something like a 'sea lung'.
325 BCE · 64.00, -15.00 · status: disputed
The account
His book is lost and survives only in quotations by Strabo, Pliny and others, many of them mocking. Thule became the name for the farthest north. Iceland, Norway and the Shetlands have all been proposed. Position approximate.
The sceptical view
The 'sea lung' may describe slushy sea ice or fog; doubt rests on how much the later writers distorted him.