Book excerpt: The Russian North is an amazing, fabulous land. He is sung in our ancient songs, epics, traditions and legends. And not only in them. The most ancient myths of Greece tell about the distant northern side of Hyperborea, which lies near the coast of the cold Cronian Ocean. They told us that it was here, behind the harsh northeastern wind of Boreas, that there is a land where a wonderful tree with golden apples of eternal youth grows. At the foot of this tree, feeding its roots, a spring of living water gushes - the water of immortality. Here, for the golden apples of the maiden-birds of the Hesperides, the hero Hercules once went. In the far north, in Hyperborea, at Tartessa - "the city where the wonders of the whole world sleep until the time comes for them to be born and come out to mortals on earth", the golden boat of the Sun was waiting for Hercules. And this is not surprising, because Hyperborea is the birthplace of the solar Apollo and here, according to the ancient Greek myth, snow-white winged swan horses brought him here every summer.