We are changing name! This is due to the unfortunate circumstance of one of our members sharing a micky name with our esteemed club. This will never do. From now on we shall be known as The Hyperborean Dining Club, or just The Hyperborean.
Hyperborea was a realm of eternal spring located in the far north beyond the land of winter. Its people were a blessed, long-lived race free of war, hard toil, and the ravages of old age and disease.
Hyperborea was identified with Britain first by Hecataeus of Abdera in the 4th century BC, as preserved in fragment by Diodorus Siculus:
In the regions beyond the land of the Celts there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily. This island, the account continues, is situated in the north and is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are called by that name because their home is beyond the point whence the north wind (Boreas) blows; and the island is both fertile and productive of every crop, and has an unusually temperate climate.
Hyperborea was a theocracy ruled by three priests of the god Apollon. These gigantic kings, known as the Boreades, were sons or descendants of the north wind Boreas. Their capital contained a circular temple dedicated to the god where hecatombs of asses were sacrificed in his honour. The musical race also celebrated his divinity with a constant festival music, song and dance.
Never the Muse is absent
from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry
and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.
Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed
in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live.
Pindar, Tenth Pythian Ode; translated by Richmond Lattimore.
Viking Feast by American painter Harvey Dunn (1884- 1952).
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