Aside from Great Britain, did the ancient Greek geographer Pytheas of Massalia really visit Iceland, the Arctic Circle, the Baltic region, and elsewhere?

[Roma_Victrix]

Pytheas of Massalia (from what is now Marseille, France), an ancient Greek geographer who lived from roughly 350 to 285 BC, not only made measurements of latitude and was the first to make a connection between the tides and the phases of the moon, but was also a renowned explorer. While the Carthaginian Hanno the Navigator was famous for exploring the Atlantic and West Africa, Pytheas was equally famed in his day for reaching northern Europe (two centuries before Gaius Julius Caesar). There were certainly contemporary Greeks like Dicaearchus who doubted many of his tales, but we are fortunate enough to have their criticism, because the written works of Pytheas have sadly been lost. Much of what we know about him is preserved in the writings of the Greek geographer Strabo and the Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder. It is through these authors that we know others wrote about Pytheas, such as the Sicilian Greek historian Timaeus.

Sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar (or in his day, the Pillars of Hercules), Pytheas apparently sailed around the Iberian Peninsula and up the Atlantic coast of France to reach England and perhaps other parts of the British Isles. According to the Massaliote Periplus, Greeks had reached the British Isles as far back as the 6th century BC, in voyages spurred by the advent of the lucrative tin trade (the Carthaginian explorer Himilco reached northwestern France during the 5th century BC for the same reason). However, much more fantastical is the idea of Pytheas perhaps reaching Ireland, Iceland, and the Baltic region where he says he reached the borderlands of the Scythians. His preserved descriptions of the lands of the Hyperboreans, along with the isle of Thule, are also very curious.

So what do you guys think? With the surviving evidence, albeit imperfect and summarized in the works of others who came after him, do you think he reached places well beyond the British Isles? Do you think he sailed around Denmark or even the southern shores of Norway and Sweden to reach the Baltic Sea and perhaps Prussia?

It's at least pretty clear that he reached the Arctic Circle, seeing how he is the first person in history to describe the Midnight Sun.