Ultima Thule is an island of the Ocean in the northwestern region, beyond Britannia, taking its name from the sun, because there the sun makes its summer solstice, and there is no daylight beyond (ultra) this. Hence its sea is sluggish and frozen.
– Isidore of Seville[1]
Through centuries of epistemic violence and colonial capitalism, ours is a time so separated from the dream that we remain asleep in the nightmare of reason.
– So Mayer and Sarah Shin[2]
After several exhausting days of sailing across the Arctic Ocean, having encountered countless storms and currents that continually threw me off course, I caught sight of a strange light on the horizon. A warm light that contrasted sharply with the leaden grey of the Arctic skies. With what little strength I had left, I steered towards that amber glow. I began to make out the contours of what appeared to be an island. Having lost all sense of time and space, I could no longer tell whether the vision was a product of my imagination or whether I had truly reached my long-awaited destination.
As I continued towards the island, the heavy clouds gradually dispersed, revealing an intensely blue sky that, far from recalling the familiarity of my homeland, created an atmosphere unlike anything I had experienced before. I was approaching a place that felt both strange and familiar, a region with no visible human presence whatsoever. In the pages that follow, I will provide an extensive account of my discoveries on the island commonly known as Thule, an enclave adrift from humanity, untouched by modern narratives of progress and civilisation. Before doing so, however, I should explain what led me to its shores.
I first encountered Thule while preparing for my curatorial research trip to Oslo. Una suggested that I explore this mythical island, which since Antiquity has haunted the cartographic imagination of northern Europe and the Arctic; a cultural phenomenon in which landscape and legend created the ideal conditions for imagining other ways of inhabiting our present moment of crisis. The Greek explorer Pytheas set out for the northern lands sometime between 330 and 320 BCE. After leaving the coast of Britain and sailing north for six days, described a territory in which “neither was earth in existence by itself nor yet sea nor vapour, but instead a sort of mixture of these similar to a marine lung in which the earth and the sea and all things together are suspended.”[3] Although his treatise On the Ocean has been lost, the accounts of his discoveries preserved by other thinkers of Antiquity would turn Thule into the northernmost limit of the world for centuries to come. After the emergence of modern science and technology on the continent, geographers and cartographers failed to identify any territory unequivocally corresponding to Pytheas’s Thule, and numerous locations have since been proposed, including the Faroe Islands, northern Scotland and the western coast of Norway.
Despite the many contradictions and gaps in the surviving accounts of Pytheas’s voyage, Thule became a mythical territory marking the limits of what could be known in a premodern society. It was not a geographical boundary in any straightforward sense; rather, it became a symbol of everything that remained beyond the threshold of knowledge. When I began this research, I was not interested in discovering a lost civilisation on that island, not even proving whether it existed, but in speculating on how its landscapes, inhabitants or traditions might offer us new tools to navigate the uncertainty surrounding the ecosocial crisis of the present. In Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, Anna Tsing, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan and Heather Anne Swanson address indeterminacy in order to examine the philosophical and material consequences of humanity’s impact on the planet.[4] The difficulty of determining whether the agents behind certain catastrophic events are human or natural leads them to compare such moments of uncertainty with supernatural experiences. Similarly, Tzvetan Todorov examines encounters with figures or presences that we cannot readily classify as belonging to our world, encounters that lie at the very heart of fantastic narrative.[5] In his account, the fantastic opens up spaces or moments of hesitation in which we cannot determine whether what we perceive belongs to this world or to another domain of reality.
To imagine Thule, I had to explore those spaces and events that lay beyond the limits of modern rationalist categories, where the real merges with the mysterious and ineffable. I had to attempt to destabilise the separation between subject and object, nature and culture, and pursue my search through the abundant folkloric imagination of Norway and Scandinavia. This is how I came across East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe,[6] which recounts the journey of a young woman searching for an enchanted prince hidden in a castle located “east of the sun and west of the moon.” Guided by the four winds, she eventually reaches this remote territory beyond every known land. Although collected in the mid-nineteenth century, the fairytale belongs to a Norwegian oral tradition predating industrialisation and, in some cases, Christianisation. This castle may not be Thule, but it contains some of the premodern elements that might help us imagine its appearance and modes of life. According to Reimund Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf, preindustrial Nordic belief systems imagined an intrinsic connection between human beings and their surroundings,[7] turning to so-called “invisible beings” to make sense of the mysteries around them: fantastic creatures such as trolls, nøkks, mermaids and mermen were understood as belonging to nature itself. They were invisible beings that became visible only at, fleeting moments, when people encountered them in the depths of dark forests, on windswept mountain peaks or amid the moaning of maritime storms. Likewise, the legendary creatures of Norwegian folklore were represented with ambiguity by Theodor Kittelsen, who depicted spectral landscapes that dissolved into monstrous figures—trolls, draugen and others—blurring the boundary between environment and creature, perception and hallucination.[8]
[the following pages of the manuscript have been torn out]
I continued sailing towards the shore, struggling through the dense waters of Thule, when suddenly I saw a cormorant plunge into the ocean. As it dived, I felt myself being pulled down with it towards the seabed [Maja Nilsen, Dreams of Utrøst, 2025]. The water was quite murky, yet I could still make out serpentine strands of seaweed swaying in the gentle currents, beckoning me to pass through them and continue uncovering the mysteries hidden in the depths. At times I could see rays of sunlight breaking through the surface, making the seaweed, the suspended grains of sand and even my own body tremble with light. I moved among the rocks, through areas where nothing could be seen but water as red as fire, and others where the amber glow from above lent the entire seabed a ghostly atmosphere. Every so often the current roared, violently shaking the seaweed and everything suspended in the water, as though the sea itself was trying to cast me back towards the surface. After diving for hours, perhaps even days, I found no trace of animal life—not even a fish to eat.
At last, I reached the surface and rose into the air. I looked down upon the spray-swept ocean beneath a dull grey sky, with no trace of the ominous amber light I had witnessed earlier along these shores. From above, I flew towards the island, whose topography now appeared radically different. Where mountainous forests had once risen in abundance, vast plains now stretched into the distance. Solemn fields of crops were caressed by the wind, as though it were brushing them. The atmosphere was so peaceful, so still, that I felt as though I had entered another world. There was still no sign of civilisation, only more cormorants circling along the coast.
Back home, when I was doing the research preceding this adventure, I learnt about a legend from the northern coast of Norway that resonates with the land of Thule. It concerns the island of Utrøst, another imaginary territory where sailors who lose their lives at sea are said to end up. When a vessel is shipwrecked in the open ocean, a group of cormorants carry the sailors to this island, a kind of paradise for those who disappeared in the freezing waters of the Arctic Ocean. Anyone wishing to return to their loved ones had to return to civilisation in the form of a cormorant. Since Utrøst was an island for the ghosts of the sea, I had never expected to encounter it on my journey. Had I drowned before ever reaching the shores of Thule? Was this merely another fever dream brought on by dehydration?
[…]
The dark, deep forest felt never-ending, but at last I caught sight of a glimmer of light between the branches and foliage. As I stepped into the light, my eyes had to adjust to the immense clearing stretching out before me. The entire surface was covered with crops of all kinds, while the paths were strewn with pieces of hay. After travelling along the island’s rugged shores and through its sinister forest, I appeared to have found the first sign of activity on Thule: evidence that agriculture existed here. Although there was still no trace of any inhabitants, I could see that in the middle of the clearing there were five banners —like those carried at demonstrations—surrounded by other objects apparently intended for working the land.
The fabrics [Nanna Gunhild Amstrup, Mykorrhiza (veninder), Solrod jordblomme, Pløjemarkens Død and Rodstokkesol saftstrømme, 2026] depicted various abstract landscapes immersed in brownish and greenish atmospheres that gave the impression that, by looking at them, one might gain access to other dimensions. When looking at the various motifs populating the images — the skeleton of a giant tree, its roots entirely exposed, or the imposing head of a goat— I began to understand that agriculture on Thule depended upon a network of relations extending far beyond the inhabitants of the island. Here, agriculture was not conceived as a relationship of domination intended to extract every resource from the earth, but as an exercise in listening and reciprocity with the soil upon which all life depends. I came to understand that the island’s inhabitants cultivated according to nature’s own rhythms and limits, as though sowing, composting and harvesting were acts of care rather than exploitation.
Around these portals stood some of the tools used by the islanders [Nanna Gunhild Amstrup, Solstokkespyd, 2026]. A pair of shoes [Nanna Gunhild Amstrup, Træsko, 2026] caught my attention because of their tall, slender heels—which in our society might seem remarkably impractical for working in the fields—and because of the pointed motifs covering the uppers. The same green spikes appeared on several spears whose function seemed less connected to sowing than to some decorative or ritual purpose. Finally, behind the tallest banner, several rocks had been carved with reliefs [Nanna Gunhild Amstrup, Brystmælk fra Vulkaner, 2026] repeating some of the motifs found on the textiles, while also introducing unfamiliar farming species: a goat whose tail ended in two tiny leaves, or a kind of enormous rodent howling towards the sun.
[…]
The interior of the brick house was almost entirely empty. Silence reigned over this domestic space, seemingly stripped of life. All the rooms looked much the same, except for the first chamber I entered after climbing the stairs. Two windows dimly illuminated the modest interior. Beneath each opening, the wall had been stripped back to expose the brickwork beneath, and at the centre of each was a niche containing a loaf of bread [Amalie Vestergaard Olsen, Om hult Brød og Ufred i Lykkelige Huse, 2026]. I picked up one of the two loaves, intending to eat it, but as I brought it closer, I noticed a rancid smell. The bread also seemed completely hollow inside, as though someone had sucked out its contents and left the shell to dry in the niche for a very long time.
As I left the room, I noticed several small reliefs hanging above some of the house’s doorways [Amalie Vestergaard Olsen, Hemmelige Stisystemer I, II, and III, 2026]. Their filiform patterns became increasingly labyrinthine, yet it was difficult to determine what they represented. On approaching one of them, I realised that its surface was neither stone nor metal, but something much softer: beeswax mixed with traces of dirt. What were these strange organic forms doing above the thresholds of an otherwise deserted house? Their position suggested that they might mark the passage from one space to another —could they also be amulets employed to protect the home?
I hurried back to the room containing the niches to examine the hollow loaves once again. The house was beginning to feel less like an abandoned domestic interior than a body whose surfaces had been altered by some obscure process. Cavities had been opened in its walls; empty loafs of bread had been placed inside them; wax and soil clung to the thresholds like traces of another organism. Perhaps these interventions were intended to protect the dwelling, or perhaps the distinction between the house and the bodies inhabiting? It had never been as clear on Thule as it was in my own world.
Why would the inhabitants have needed to place so many protective objects throughout their homes? I ran towards the exit, grabbing one of the reliefs hanging above the threshold.
[…]
Below, deep within the bowels of Thule, nothing could be seen except a few amber and blue lights glowing at the far end of the passage. After wandering aimlessly through the underground corridors, I took the small relief out of my pocket and realised that its sinuous forms could help me find the way through that cold and damp subterranean space. Following the route traced by the relief, I entered a larger chamber where several spotlights dramatically illuminated five groups of hybrid figures [Vilde von Krogh, Matrix, 2026]. The statues had been assembled from various found objects: magnificent carpets, ornate wooden chairs, ancient carts, bare tree trunks, fragments of timber reassembled into new forms, and beautiful strings of semiprecious stones. Yet the most unsettling elements were animal skulls, fragments of armour that might have survived some bloody battle, horns torn from their bodies, and taxidermied animals arranged within this strange installation like specimens in a natural history museum diorama. I could not tell whether I had entered a sanctuary containing representations of the local mythological pantheon or whether these sinister figures might come alive at any moment. For an instant, I wondered whether stealing that small relief from the brick house had led me directly to this subterranean chamber.
I concluded that these figures must belong to an ancient system of beliefs, older even than the stories I had read about Norse mythology. Yet the longer I remained among them, the less certain I became that they were representations of gods at all. Human, animal and vegetal forms appeared to pass continuously into one another: a skull extended into branches, fragments of trees became limbs, and objects that must once have belonged to everyday life had been incorporated into unfamiliar bodies. Even the remains of violence —armour, severed horns and bones— seemed to have been absorbed into new forms. Nothing appeared entirely dead or inanimate.
The presences surrounding me resembled some of the northern myths I knew, yet seemed to follow radically different logics. A powerful feminine principle ran through them, but not in opposition to the masculine. Rather, the distinction itself appeared unstable, as if these beings belonged to a time before such categories had hardened into separate forms. Everything seemed to participate in a circular movement in which death could become the condition for another form of life, and one body could continue through another. Perhaps these creatures were not gods in a familiar sense, but manifestations of forces running through animals, plants, stones, water and the inhabitants of the island themselves. The shadows continually distorted the figures and, as I moved among them, their bodies appeared to transform. At times, I thought I could make out a face; at others, a branch, an animal, or simply a dark mass.
[…]
On opening my eyes, the blinding light outside seared them. I struggled to my feet, fighting the dizziness that threatened to pull me back towards the ground. A faint breeze brushed against my skin. The light was vast and precise. I had returned to a familiar place. Home.
[1] Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, XIV.6.4, p. 294.
[2] So Mayer and Sarah Shin, “Introduction: Pandora Can’t Read the Map,” in The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin(London: Silver Press, 2025).
[3] Pytheas of Massalia, On the Ocean: Text, Translation and Commentary, ed. and trans. Christina Horst Roseman (Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1994), 125.
[4] Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds., Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
[5] Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 24–25.
[6] Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, “East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon,” in Popular Tales from the Norse, trans. George Webbe Dasent (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons; Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1912), 22–35.
Opening performance
The exhibition opening will be marked by with Um Canto, a performance by the Barcelona-based artist Mourae, starting at 18h30.
One of the characteristics of the mouras (mythological femininities of the Galician oral tradition) is their role as a figure who helps to cross over to the beyond. A role that allows them to relate between realities with the dead and the living and with the ghosts of human beings and more-than-human beings.
Mourae, as a contemporary version of these femininities, arrives on the island of Thule laden with wet stories. Songs and legends that mix marine biology, lost traditions and comparative mythologies. Um Canto is constructed as a hydrofeminist sound journey where the voice, the body and electronic music accompany a descent towards the bottom of an ocean that has always been within ourselves
Acknowledgements
The exhibition has been realized with generous support from the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Madrid and Acción Cultural Española/PICE.
Nanna Gunhild Amstrup’s work is realised with the generous support of the Norwegian Culture Fund, The Danish Arts Foundation, OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and Hverdag Books.
Maja Nilsen’s work has been realised with the support of the Norwegian Culture Fund, the Audio and Visual Fund, and the Norwegian Visual Artists’ Fund.
Vilde von Krogh’s installation has been conceived with contributions by Morten Magnus, Haavard L. S. Løtningsbakken, Esme El Moussaoui, and Natalia Balbina Thorsen.
About the artists and the curator
Nanna Gunhild Amstrup work material-based, inspired by role-playing and storytelling. They work with drawing, textiles, publications and sculpture and holds a master’s degree in medium- and material-based art from Oslo Academy of Fine Arts (2024). In 2016, they founded the publishing house Marehalm, from which they have printed and published several artist books and publications. Amstrup’s work revolves around the power of whom gets to define or reproduce a narrative. Myths and storytelling have been rewritten throughout history to serve specific interests and maintain dominant societal structures.
Amstrup’s works are queer and feminist re-readings of such stories – an attempt to make visible and remind us that the queer has always been here. Amstrup’s works have been shown at exhibitions at e.g. Den Frie Utstillingsbygning in Copenhagen, Tromsø Kunstforening, Spriten Kunsthall in Skien, Rønnebæksholm Kunsthal in Næstved, Íslensk Grafík Gallery in Reykjavik, Gallery Neon in Wroclaw, Entrée in Bergen, Hvervenbukta Paviljong in Oslo and Aarhus Artspace.
Maja Nilsen is a visual artist, set designer, and costume designer based and working in Oslo. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and NCAD in Dublin (2000–2005).
Nilsen has a multidisciplinary artistic practice encompassing collage, painterly cut-outs, sculpture, public art commissions, and set design. Her artistic practice explores humanity’s attempts to understand the world through science, mythology, religion, and folklore. Through fragments, cut-outs, and collage, she combines elements from different realities, creating unexpected and poetic visual worlds in the space between fact and fiction. Inspired by natural processes and mythical narratives, she explores transformation, creation, and collapse. Her works move between the familiar and the strange, the visible and the unresolved. Through an intuitive and exploratory working method, Nilsen seeks to rediscover and reorganize the world. She has completed several public art commissions, her work has been acquired by public institutions, and she has exhibited both in Norway and internationally.
Vilde von Krogh was trained as a visual artist at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design (Faculty of Fine Art). Her practice is multimedia-based, spanning various artistic genres – including art mediation and the facilitation of studios, workspaces, and exhibition venues. Her work ranges from video art and drawings to installations and sculptures that serve as settings for performances. Her pieces often feature strong surrealist elements, with burlesque and generously exaggerated forms conveying potent messages; at the core of her practice is the conviction that the artist should pose the questions and set the terms for the artistic debate. Since completing her education, she has maintained a prolific career, exhibiting just as readily at the Stenersen Museum as in small, alternative galleries.
Her various artistic roles—such as facilitating spaces and projects—stand as significant artistic endeavors in their own right, alongside her own creative output. The collaborative, volunteer-driven effort invested by countless artists to realize and operate these projects can be viewed through the lenses of relational aesthetics and social sculpture. In recent years, von Krogh has increasingly worked in collaboration with other artists, often in performative settings where they shape the scenography to frame a specific theme. Such interactive, performative methods can give rise to unexpected situations and powerful statements within an art world that risks marginalization and resignation amidst a media landscape that churns out trivialities. This context encompasses Prosjektskolen [The Project School], an institution owned and educationally directed by von Krogh; the school serves as a laboratory for artistic ideas, research, and innovation, where active contemporary artists work alongside the students.
Amalie Vestergaard Olsen works with installation, sculpture, drawing, text and performance. Her works often refer to magical imaginary worlds that existed prior and leading up to the witch hunts of the Renaissance. She is interested in how worldviews and knowledge systems of earlier times can be reused to create an increased resonance between humans, bodies and their environment.
Vestergaard Olsen lives in Oslo and has a master’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen (2020). In recent years, she has shown works at Norsk Billedhoggerforening (Oslo), Tegnerforbundet (Oslo), Udstillingsstedet Sydhavn Station (Copenhagen) og Heerz Tooya (Veliko Turnovo).
Jorge Van den Eynde is an independent curator and editor currently based in Madrid.
After completing an MA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London, thanks to the Botín Foundation Curatorial Fellowhip, Jorge began his professional career as a curator and editor. Over the past six years, he has combined his position as Associate Editor at Editorial Concreta with his curatorial work. He has curated the exhibitions East of the Sun and West of the Moon at Billedkunstnerne i Oslo (2026); Tales at MARES, Italy (2026); Dark Forest at El Chico, Madrid (2024); Subplotters at Pradiauto, Madrid (2023); the exhibition series Meandro Merodeo at Nadie Nunca Nada No, Madrid (2022); and the group show La flecha que mata el tiempo at ABM Confecciones, Madrid (2022). Along with his collaborator Amina Berdin, he has been appointed curator of the 4th-WALL Biennial 2029 in Los Angeles.
As an editor, he is publishing Heka. Un grimorio, an anthology exploring the connections between magic and technology (cielo santo, 2026). He oversaw issue 21 of Concreta, Aventurémonos, and was guest editor of A*Desk for its issue Among the Stars. He has published essays and interviews for magazines such as Concreta, exit-express, Umbigo, or Mercurius. In 2024, he was part of the Troglosoma research group, within the framework of Organismo: Art in Applied Critical Ecologies, organised by TBA21 and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Jorge’s curatorial practice explores the permeability between binary categories such as body and technology, magic and science, nature and culture, or orality and written testimony. In this way, his curatorial adventures take multiple forms through a methodology oriented towards speculative fiction as a means to articulate other imaginaries and futures.