HYPERBOREAN, in Ancient Geography, a term applied to those people and places which were to the northward of the Scythians. The ancients had but very little acquaintance with the Hyperborean regions; and all that they tell us respecting them is doubtful, and much of it positively false. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Hyperboeans were so called by reason that they dwelt beyond the wind Boreas; ὕπερ, signifying above or beyond, and Βόρεας, Boreas, the north wind. This etymology is natural and plausible, notwithstanding all that has been said against it by Rudbeck, who contends that the word is Gothic, and signifies nobility. Herodotus doubts whether or not there were any such nations as the Hyperboeans. Strabo, who professes to believe that there were, does not take hyperborean to signify beyond Boreas or the north, as Herodotus understood it. The preposition ὑπερ, in this case, he supposes only to help to form a superlative, so that hyperborean, on his principles, means no more than most northern; from which it appears that the ancients themselves scarcely knew what the name meant. Several of our modern geographers, as Hoffman, Cellarius, and others, have placed the Hyperboeans in the northern parts of the European continent, that is, amongst the Siberians and
Samoicids. According to them, the Hyperboeans of the Hyperboreans were those in general who lived farthest to the north. The Hyperboeans of our days are those Russians who inhabit the country between the Volga and the White Sea. According to Cluver, the name Celts was synonymous with that of Hyperboeans.