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Hyperborea

From a 1507 Ruysch map, showing the islands around the North Pole, and the Hyperborean region.

According to Pliny, the Hyperboreans lived beyond the Ripaean mountains (which is a generic term for the mountains of Northern Europe and Russia.)  They are a happy race, and "all discord and all sorrow is unknown."  The Hyperboreans live to extreme old age, dying by leaping off a certain rock into the sea after having a full life. The sun rises in the midsummer, and then sets in midwinter, and there is a "delightful climate."  Pliny goes on to say that "Some authorities have placed these people not in Europe but on the nearest part of the coasts of Asia, because there is a race there with similar customs and a similar location, named the Attaci."  (Pliny Book IV, sec 89.)  (Rackham, 1942.)