Center for Open Access in Science ▪ https://www.centerprode.com/ojsp.html Open Journal for Studies in Philosophy, 2023, 7(2), 19-26. ISSN (Online) 2560-5380 ▪ https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsp.0702.01019b _________________________________________________________________________ © Authors. Terms and conditions of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) apply. Correspondence: Asen Bondzhev, New Bulgarian University, Department of History, Sofia, BULGARIA. Abaris and the Extraordinary Abilities of the Hyperboreans Asen Bondzhev New Bulgarian University, Department of History, Sofia, BULGARIA Received: 29 September 2023 ▪ Revised: 3 December 2023 ▪ Accepted: 6 December 2023 Abstract Hyperborea was an otherworldly paradise, a mythical utopia, which was both part of the mythical past and ever present in Greek literature. The Hyperboreans brought innovations to ancient Greeks culture and help in time of need. This study presents some of their extraordinary abilities and focuses on the most famous Hyperborean – Abaris. He came to Greece as an ambassador led by Apollo’s arrow, and some claimed that he could fly on it. Abaris seems always to have been regarded as a spiritual or magical authority. Later we hear of him as a possible founder of sanctuaries and as a seer and prophet – he foretold and cured epidemics, wrote oracles. Whether he was legendary or historical (but even then, heavily overlaid by legend), he is an example of archaic wise man who possessed special knowledge of rituals, divination, and healing. Keywords: Hyperborea, mythology, Abaris, Ancient Greece, history of religion. 1. Hyperborea The mythology of Hyperborea, compared with other legendary places in Antiquity, had a significant specificity for the Greeks. If the Elysian Fields, the final resting place of the souls, belonged to an unearthly world, and the once rich and powerful Atlantis had long ago sunk into the ocean, Hyperborea, on the contrary, was a completely real, although extremely difficult to reach territory – “neither by ships nor on foot” (Pind. Pyth. 10.29). 1 Hyperborea was an otherworldly paradise, a mythical utopia, which was both part of the mythical past and ever present in Greek literature (Bridgman, 2005: 3). Pliny (4.26) describes this utopia and its inhabitants: A happy race, known as the Hyperborei, a race that lives to an extreme old age, and which has been the subject of many marvelous stories. Here we find light for six months together, given by the sun in one continuous day, who does not, however, as some ignorant persons have asserted, conceal himself from the vernal equinox to autumn. On the contrary, to these people there is but one rising of the sun for the year, and that at the summer solstice, and but one setting, at the winter solstice. The gods receive their worship singly and in groups, while all discord and every kind of sickness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them only when satiated 1 For a full overview on the Hyperborean myth and its further development refer to my forthcoming paper Hyperborea on Maps – Always to the North (2023).