A cross posting from my GeoLibrary blog.
Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man’s-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life.
The North is associated with human qualities such as courage, honour, strength and endurance. The author explains how the North came to be pitted against the concepts of the South and the Orient as places of ease, comfort and enjoyment. Whereas the North is perceived as a character-building region of physical challenge, the South is associated with decadence and the development of the mind. Expeditions to Greenland, Iceland and the Arctic became widely popular throughout the nineteenth century.
Source: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/extreme-north/
The book is really excellent, and the result of a huge amount of research which is then pieced together into a series of short vignettes which are all fascinating. There has been hundreds of years of exploration of the North, and the author has selected a wealth of materil and stories and provided lots of new insights in a range of areas.
These include lengthy sections linked to Iceland. These are of particular interest to me because of my fairly regular visits and interest in all things Icelandic, such as my Fieldnotes from Iceland blog.
As always with a translated book, we also need to credit the work of the translator: in this case Jefferson Chase.
This was a great read, with plenty of new insights into Iceland and other points North, and the various reasons why Ultima Thule is problematic.
My copy was published by Norton in 2023
Paperback, 246pp
ISBN: 978-1-324-05028-5
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