Pytheas

Pytheas was a Greek navigator, geographer, and explorer born in the city of Massalia in southern France who is credited for being the first Greek to visit and describe the British Isles and wrote an account of Scandinavia. Although his work “On the Ocean” is lost, thanks to the ancient authors’ information about his venture, it is partly preserved.

Pytheas was sent on an expedition by the merchants of his native town with the aim to break the Phoenician monopoly in tin trade and discover the route to the tin deposits in southern Britain which served as source for all of Europe and the Mediterranean.

Having reached Belerium (Land’s End) in Cornwall, the southwestern tip of Britain which was the source of tin he described what he found:

"The inhabitants of Britain who dwell about the headland of Belerium are unusually hospitable and have adopted a civilized manner of life because of their intercourse with foreign traders. It is they who work the tin, extracting it by an ingenious process. The bed itself is of rock but between are pieces of earth which they dig out to reach the tin. Then they work the tin into pieces the size of knuckle bones and carry it to an island that lies off Britain and is called Ictis (St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall); for at the time of ebb tide the space between this island and the mainland becomes dry, and they can take the tin in large quantities over to the island on their wagons."

From Cornwall he sailed north through the Irish Sea all the way to the northern tip of Scotland, probably going as far as the Orkney Islands. He left description of another land, called “Island of Thule” (Norway or Iceland) located beyond northern Scotland. From that time, this term became reserved for the far northern extremes of the earth. He also wrote that he was told that north of Thule there was a land where the sea became solid and the sun never set in summertime. Since that statement sound absurd for the people of the Mediterranean his report was not believed and was ridiculed for years later.