But the debate goes on, and it seems worth adding some further thoughts on the Newgrange angle. The original article is fascinating, and its allure may be be increased by a compare-and-contrast exercise between Newgrange in Ireland and Stonehenge in Wessex. Just for your consideration …

1. The Hyperboreans lived “beyond the point whence the north wind blows.” Ireland fits that description far more fittingly than the soft south of England. While it’s tempting to think of the Orkeys here, the island that Pytheas describes doesn’t fit the Orkneys.

2. The island where the Hyperboreans live is described thus: ” … in the regions beyond the land of the Celts (Gaul) there lies in the ocean an island no smaller than Sicily.” The Gauls are predominantly in the west of Europe and Britain (Wales is called in French “Country of the Gauls”, Pays de Galles) and Ireland – in the west – has a far earlier Neolithic history than does southern Wessex. Furthermore, Sicily has an area of about 25000 sq km, whereas Ireland has an area of about 70000. This makes it fit the description of “no smaller than Sicily” far better than Britain, which is nearly 10 times as big as Sicily, and isn’t comparable as an island. You can compare Ireland and Sicily on a roughly contemporaneous map prepared by Eratosthenes (died 194BC). Ireland pretty much exactly fits the description in the image.

3. The temple is ” … a notable temple decorated with many offerings … spherical in shape.” Seems to me that Newgrange is more spherical than Stonehenge, and is pretty notable (see the image above, in the essay.) Must be the most notable temple for hundreds of miles.

4. And Newgrange is notably “decorated” too, as in Pitheas’ description, with art that is unmatched anywhere in the south of England, at least. You can see a sample in this link.

5. The temple appears to be a sacred precinct of Apollo, whom the Greeks considered to be a god of the light and the sun. Dennis’s original essay claims that “Apollo was said to visit Britain during the winter months” but presumably here Britain has been inferred from the land of the Hyperboreans, which could equally be Ireland. Newgrange is famous for its midwinter solstice roofbox, a precise alignment that allows the rising sun around the winter solstice to shine directly along the long passage into the chamber and illuminate the chamber. This is a more definite connection with midwinter than at Stonehenge, where the natural and obvious alignment seems to favour midsummer.

6. Dennis equates Vespasian’s Camp to “a city is there which is sacred to this god.” At Newgrange, there is the adjacent Great Mound at Knowth which is similar in size to Newgrange and is surrounded by 18 smaller satellite mounds. This seems to be just as likely to be a city “sacred to the god” in that it is described as megaloprepes, which translates as “befitting a great man, magnificent, splendid; full of majesty, majestic”. What could be more befitting a great man than Knowth, with its 18 satellite mounds? It’s far more impressive – majestic – than anything at Vespasian’s Camp.

7. The word sphairoeides seems significant here. Dennis claims that in the original Greek it could also mean circular or round. While this is possible, surely the predominant meaning must have been “spherical”, otherwise we’d now all be wearing wedding spheres on our sphere fingers. If Pytheas had wanted to describe something as circular, he could have described it as enkyklios, for example (though I don’t pretend to speak with any authority whatsoever on this.) Look up sphaira and you’ll find that it also means “dome” or “vault”, and both these meanings fit Newgrange very nicely. Domed on the outside, vaulted on the inside.

8. In this city, ” … the majority of its inhabitants are players on the cithara; and these continually play on this instrument in the temple and sing hymns of praise to the god, glorifying his deeds … ”
I can’t find any reference to the cithara, or lyre, in Newgrange, but it does sound a lot like the Irish harp (as in the Guinness logo.) And prehistoric Wessex is not exactly well known for musical instruments. However, this link claims that “Ireland’s extensive collection of surviving pre-historic trumpets, horns, bells and others make us unique in the world. … Prehistoric Music Ireland has been reproducing and studying Bronze Age horns and Iron Age trumpas … ”
While a wooden cithara or lyre wouldn’t have survived, it seems as though Ireland has a strong musical tradition (“the majority of its inhabitants”) which would have impressed visitors from the Mediterranean.

It’s unfortunate that the 200 years between Pytheas’s voyage and Diodorus Siculus’s writing it down means a lot has been lost in memory and translation, and much has had to be inferred from vague descriptions. Other commentators for instance have interpreted sphairoeides as a misspelling of the word “spiral”, and have attributed it to Silbury Hill, also a sort of dome. But this theory still has the general problems of Wessex not really fitting Pitheas’s description.

I know that my points above are not conclusive evidence for Newgrange, as opposed to Vespasian’s Camp, but there does seem to be good reason to consider Newgrange as a contender for Pytheas’ temple and city. This of course does not in any way detract from Stonehenge and Vespasian’s Camp as glories of Wessex.

I’ve been having a long think about this. Within the last 3 weeks, I’ve spoken with two senior, well-meaning and diligent archaeologists who both independently bemoaned how many people wilfully misinterpret the material of others. If I’m putting original ideas concerning Stonehenge into the public domain, I suppose there’s no good reason why I should be immune from this practise when others aren’t, but that doesn’t mean to say I’m going to give it much airspace.

Weather – by its very nature, it changes, while it seems to change more in Britain than in most other places, hence the British pre-occupation with discussing it. There’s a lot to explore on the subject of ancient weather reports, but while it’s certainly interesting, it’s not something I’m planning to look into for now.

As for “the link between Pytheas and the Hyperborean culture”, as you carefully phrased it, there’s a distinct difference between the island of Hyperborea itself, which is a fixed, physical thing, and the culture, which is a more abstract concept that was capable of spreading beyond the immediate boundaries of its origin. Be that as it may, I know perfectly well what you’re getting at, but I’m not going to repeat the arguments I’ve presented earlier.

Aubrey Burl is just one of a number of distinguished writers who have looked into this matter and as I’ve mentioned before, he presented a good argument in the pages of British Archaeology for Pytheas’ notable temple being Callanish, presumably because he saw a number of compelling reasons for identifying Hyperborea with Britain in the first place.

The fact that Pytheas himself doesn’t mention Hyperborea is one blindingly obvious reason why the whole matter has long been a subject of debate, unlike the notion of Rome being in Italy, for example. If you know of another island off the coast of Gaul in the north Atlantic that isn’t Britain, but which fits the description of Hyperborea and is also home to a magnificent precinct, temple and city of Apollo, then I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d be very interested to hear of it.