Finally, after years of agonizing, I’ve found at least one reader in Greenland. There were eight views from Ultima Thule this week, but it’s too much to hope that they came from more than one reader.
Sadly, now China and much of West Africa has gone missing. The next goal is Iran, but perhaps we’re blocked there.
Ultima Thule isn’t a particular place. It means, roughly, “farthest north.” It is, however, a Swedish rock band, among other things. 🙂
From Wikipedia:
Tacitus’ Life of Agicola contains the phrase “dispecta est et Thule”. (and even Thule was sighted) Since the surrounding passages refer to the circumnavigation of Britain and the phrase comes immediately after a reference to the conquering of the Orcades, it is likely that the reference is to the Shetland Islands. (Shetland is some 50 miles north of the most northerly of the Orkney Islands)
…or the Faroes or even perhaps Iceland. I think that we can accept Jerry’s usage particularly as there is a place named Thule in northermost Greenland.
On the road to WEIT world conquest, I get curious of the etymology. Greenland and Iceland are easy of course, Shetland is the usual complex history:
“The oldest version of the modern name Shetland is Hetlandensis recorded in 1190 becoming Hetland in 1431 after various intermediate transformations. It is possible that the Pictish “cat” sound forms part of this Norse name. It then became Hjaltland in the 16th century.” [Wikipedia.]
Implicitly WEIT land, never mind web visitors.
But what about Faroes? “The name of the islands is first recorded on the Hereford map (1280), where they are labelled farei. The name has been explained as derived from a Celtic term for “far islands”[by whom?], but in popular etymology it has long been understood as based on Old Norse fár “livestock”, thus fær-øer “sheep islands”.”
Not one of Wikipedia’s best articles, leaving the reader with two unsubstantiated claims and one conundrum.
Yes – it is a bit like a game of ‘Risk’!
Needless to say it was the Irish monk, Dicuil, who recorded the islands (unless it was Pytheas first!) perhaps from details of other Irish visitors, in 825, in his De mensura Orbis terrae.
wait for the current upside of the Holocene sine wave to go up a little further, at least back to where it was last time, when there were wheat farms and “green” on greenland.
The Acanthostega gunnari mentioned in your book ~ maybe she ain’t extinct.
You had eight views from Uma Thurman??? Jerry you sexy beast.
(Wait… what? Oh. Sorry.)
Great, but we still need a post from there!
Dear Greenlander WEIT reader, please become a writer. You don’t have to say much, just give us some observation from the farthest north.
I see Madagascar has been filled in as well.
To quote the internet, “wait, what?” I thought this happened weeks ago. I’ve been drinking and it could be that I’m just suffering a wicked case of deja vu, but I even seem to remember someone commenting on what a disproportionately large area of globe Jerry got to check off in honor of what was presumeably a single view…
I also recall Jerry’d spotted a Greenland IP some weeks ago, and as some readers suggested, it may well be a Danish reader on a field tour in our ‘colony’.
Regarding Iran: Yes, it’s quite likely that you are filtered there (both because of your content and also because they have filtered WordPress.com). That being said, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have any reader from Iran. Many Iranians use various tools to get rid of Internet filtering. The result is often an IP address from another country.
So I wondered whether Greenland was being counted as part of Denmark or whether it had separate IP blocks. Sure enough there are two of them, totaling a whopping 16,000 IP addresses for that huge swatch of land and its 56,000 inhabitants.
http://www.nirsoft.net/countryip/gl.html
And while we’re on the subject, the Vatican City has its own IP block.
http://www.nirsoft.net/countryip/va.html
So Jerry, how many visitors from the Holy See do you get? 🙂
Here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/we-got-greenland/
Hi
you have another reader from East Timor!
Good job!
Cheers
Silvio
One reader from Uganda here 😀
Cool. Cheers!
Yep – you are blocked in Iran!
http://viewdns.info/iranfirewall/?siteurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwhyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com
What do Iranians think of evolution? Has anyone polled them?
To add to the list of countries, I’ve been reading your website since 2009 when I lived in Papua New Guinea, and in Fiji (it’s quite possible that the IP address I accessed the site from in PNG was associated with Australia).
Can someone please tell me what widget that is for WordPress. I’ve been searching for a better visitor map widget, and I kind of don’t like anything I’ve found?
By the way, self-hosted WordPress blogs don’t get blocked. I’ve got lots of Iran and China visitors. But I’m missing Greenland. Got a hit from Antarctica though. Not sure if that was a mistake.
http://viewdns.info/iranfirewall/?siteurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.skepticalraptor.com
I feel like a radical. And I’m not nice about religious either.