Cabinet 59: The North

The idea of the North in modernity—its associations with sparseness and scarcity, to hardships and remoteness—has fed countless narratives of journeying to places and fates unknown. In classical antiquity, however, the north was a place of perfection. In the 5th century BCE, Pindar wrote of the wonders of Hyperborea—a northerly land whose natives lived unaffected by "sickness or ruinous old age," by "toil or battles." The poet also claimed this kingdom could be found "neither by ship nor on...