(2) The assertion that Pytheas did not himself say that he had been in the country where the night was two and three hours long, conflicts with the words of Geminus. Cleomedes also tells us that Pytheas is said to have been in Thule.
(3) The definite statements in a majority of the authorities that Thule lay within the Arctic Circle and was the land of the midnight sun, also exclude the Shetland Isles. The astronomer Pytheas cannot have been so far mistaken as to the latitude of these islands.
(4) That it was six days' sail to Thule from Britain[55] will not suit Shetland, even if we make allowance for the frequently obscure statements as to the day's journeys that are attributed to Pytheas (e.g., by Strabo).
(5) That Strabo in one place [ii. 114] calls Thule "the northernmost of the British Isles" cannot be used, as Müllenhoff uses it, as a proof of its belonging to these islands and having a Celtic population. There is not a word to this effect. To Strabo, who also placed Ierne (Ireland) out in the sea north of Britain, it must have been natural to call all the islands in that part of the world British. Indeed, he says himself in the same breath that Thule, according to Pytheas, lay within the Arctic Circle. How little weight he attached to the expression British is additionally apparent from another passage [ii. 75], where he says that "Hipparchus, relying on Pytheas, placed these inhabited regions [Shetland] farther north than Britain."
(6) Pliny [Nat. Hist. iv. 104] mentions among islands north of Britain as "the greatest of all, 'Berricen,' which is the starting-place for Thule." Berricen, which in some MSS. is written "Nerigon," has been taken for Mainland of Shetland,[56] while others have seen in the form Nerigon the first appearance in literature of the name of Norway ("Noregr"),[57] though with doubtful justification, since this name was hardly in existence at that time. But whether the island be Shetland or Norway, this passage in Pliny puts Thule outside the Scottish islands. And the reference to that country makes it probable that the statements, in part at any rate, are derived from Pytheas.
(7) Finally, it may perhaps be pointed out that Thule is nowhere referred to as a group of islands; the name rather suggests the idea of a continuous land or a single island. To this it may be objected that neither is Orkan referred to as an archipelago in the oldest authorities; but it is uncertain whether in Pytheas, as in Diodorus, Orkan was not used of the northern point of Brettanice, and only later transferred to the islands lying to the north of this. Thule, on the other hand, always appears as a land far out in the ocean, and it is moreover uncertain whether Pytheas ever expressly described it as an island.