When Apollo wanted to escape the chill of winter, he headed his swan-driven chariot to the land of Hyperborea. Hyperborea is a mythical place -- an island, sometimes -- in the distant north, sometimes specified as to the north of Thrace. Its residents are the Hyperboreans. The name Hyperborea was thought to mean beyond Boreas, or beyond the North Wind, since Boreas was the name of the North Wind. Since Hyperborea was beyond winter, it was eternally spring, according to Theoi: Hyperborea.
The Hyperboreans periodically sent gifts to Apollo. Herodotus, according to the 1911 Encyclopedia, says Opis and Arge, and later, Hyperoche and Laodice, four young women, each pair escorted by 5 men, brought the offerings to Delos. Since the gift-bearers failed to return, the Hyperboreans changed their way of sending gifts: they wrapped them in wheat-straw, passed them to their neighbors, with instructions that the neighbors should relay them on until they reached Delos.
The Greek historian/ethnographer Hecataeus of Abdera (fl. end of the 4th C. B.C.) wrote about the utopian Hyperborea, a place that he says survived to his day and may have claimed to have visited, according to Dillery. Hecataeus located Hyperborea on an island in the far north "beyond the north wind" and "across the frozen sea," so some locate Hyperborea in the Arctic. Pindar (Pythian 10) says the Hyperboreans don't get sick or old, don't have to work or fight. They live in houses close to their temple to Apollo. Pindar calls the Hyperboreans a sacred race. Alcaeus (fl. 7th C. B.C.) is thought to have written that Apollo lived with the Hyperboreans for a year, during which time he gave them laws. If you've ever seen a picture of Apollo on a swan chariot, it is connected with this myth. The chariot was a gift from Zeus that Apollo used to fly to Hyperborea.
"Hecataeus of Abdera: Hyperboreans, Egypt, and the 'Interpretatio Graeca,'" by John Dillery; Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte (3rd Qtr., 1998), pp. 255-275.
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