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 Hyperboreans were so called by reason that they dwelt beyond the wind Boreas; ἀνά signifying above or beyond, and Βορέας, 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 Hyperboreans. 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 ἀνά, 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 Hyperboreans in the northern parts of the European continent, that is, amongst the Siberians and Samoieds. According to them, the Hyperboreans of the Hyperborean ancients were those in general who lived farthest to the north. The Hyperboreans of our days are those Russians who inhabit the country between the Volga and the White Sea. According to Clavius, the name Celts was synonymous with that of Hyperboreans.