Ultima Thule

Ultima Thule
Author: Jean Malaurie
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393051501

"Ultima Thule" is the terrible and yet fantastic story of European and American exploration in the polar north. The book brings to life both sides of the clash that arose when white men arrived in the Far North. Heavily illustrated with period photos, engravings, artifacts, and drawings. 650 photos.

A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier

A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier
Author: David Welky
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393254429

A Booklist Best Literary Travel Book (2017) and Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book (2016) “A penetrating study of human character in a challenging environment. . . . [David Welky’s] seamless narrative, chilling at times and always thought-provoking, transports the reader to a time when the Arctic was virtually as harsh and inaccessible a place as the Moon or Mars.” —Natural History From a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, famed Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary spots a line of mysterious peaks dotting the horizon. In 1906, he names that distant, uncharted territory “Crocker Land.” Years later, two of Peary’s disciples, George Borup and Donald MacMillan, take the brave steps Peary never did: with a team of amateur adventurers and intrepid native guides, they endeavor to reach this unknown land and fill in the last blank space on the globe. What follows is hardship and mishap the likes of which none of the explorers could possibly have imagined. From howling blizzards and desperate food shortages to crime and tragedy, the explorers experience a remarkable journey of endurance, courage, and hope. Set in one of the world’s most inhospitable places, A Wretched and Precarious Situation is an Arctic tale unlike any other.

Images of the North

Images of the North
Author: Sverrir Jakobsson
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2009
Genre: Art
ISBN: 904202528X

This interdisciplinary volume seeks to examine and explore the various issues surrounding image construction, identity making and representations of the North, as well as the interconnectedness between those issues. The aim is to elucidate the multiple aspects of the idea of the North, both as a mythological space and a discursive system created and shaped by cultures outside the North as well as from within. The objective of the research project Iceland and Images of the North is to elucidate several aspects of images of the North and to explore their functions in the present, focusing especially on Iceland. What effect have Iceland and its people had on images of the North, and how do those images influence the Icelanders and other nations? The project will be a cooperative, interdisciplinary undertaking by researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

Muskox Land

Muskox Land
Author: Lyle Dick
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 1552380505

Muskox Land provides a meticulously researched and richly illustrated treatment of Canada's High Arctic as it interweaves insights from historiography, Native studies, ecology, anthropology, and polar exploration.

German Representations of the Far North (17th-19th Centuries)

German Representations of the Far North (17th-19th Centuries)
Author: Jan Borm
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 152756276X

German travellers, explorers, missionaries and scholars produced significant new knowledge about the Arctic in Europe and elsewhere from the 17th until the 19th century. However, until now, no English-language study or collective volume has been dedicated to their representations of the Arctic. Possibly due to linguistic barriers, this corpus has not been sufficiently taken into account in transnational and circumpolar approaches to the fast-growing field of Arctic Studies. This volume serves to heighten awareness about the importance of these writings in view of the history of the Far North. The chapters gathered here offer critical readings of manuscripts and publications, including travelogues, natural histories of the Arctic, newspaper articles and scholarly texts based on first-hand observations, as well as works of fiction. The sources are considered in their historical context, as political, religious, social, economic and cultural aspects are discussed in relation to discourses about the Arctic in general. The volume opens with a spirited preface by Professor Jean Malaurie, France’s most distinguished Arctic specialist and author of The Last Kings of Thule (1955).

Walrus

Walrus
Author: John Miller
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2014-06-15
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1780233310

From Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” to the Beatles’s “I am the Walrus,” walruses have played an enigmatic role in popular culture. With their prominent tusks and distinctive whiskers, these odd-looking but charismatic animals have long held a crucial place in the lives and folklore of Arctic indigenous cultures, both as a vital food source and as a part of traditional oral literature. However, commercial trade of walrus products has caused the creatures to be hunted to the brink of extinction, with disastrous effects on human populations in the Arctic. Combining natural, cultural, and environmental history, Walrus explores the intriguing story of an animal that today is on the front lines of conservation debates. John Miller and Louise Miller describe the problems facing walruses even after the twentieth-century bans on nonindigenous walrus hunting—shrinking pack-ice caused by global warming and the exploitation of Arctic oil and gas resources are destroying the animal’s habitat. Wonderfully illustrated with images of walruses in the wild and from art and popular culture, Walrus offers a refreshing account of these large-flippered mammals while also illustrating the ethical dilemmas they embody, from the intensifying conflict between the developed world and indigenous interests to the impact of global warming on arctic animals.

Travel and Ethics

Travel and Ethics
Author: Corinne Fowler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2013-12-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135019339

Despite the recent increase in scholarly activity regarding travel writing and the accompanying proliferation of publications relating to the form, its ethical dimensions have yet to be theorized with sufficient rigour. Drawing from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, literary studies and modern languages, the contributors in this volume apply themselves to a number of key theoretical questions pertaining to travel writing and ethics, ranging from travel-as-commoditization to encounters with minority languages under threat. Taken collectively, the essays assess key critical legacies from parallel disciplines to the debate so far, such as anthropological theory and postcolonial criticism. Also considered, and of equal significance, are the ethical implications of the form’s parallel genres of writing, such as ethnography and journalism. As some of the contributors argue, innovations in these genres have important implications for the act of theorizing travel writing itself and the mode and spirit in which it continues to be conducted. In the light of such innovations, how might ethical theory maintain its critical edge?

The Blind Man and the Loon

The Blind Man and the Loon
Author: Craig Mishler
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1496210107

The story of the Blind Man and the Loon is a living Native folktale about a blind man who is betrayed by his mother or wife but whose vision is magically restored by a kind loon. Variations of this tale are told by Native storytellers all across Alaska, arctic Canada, Greenland, the Northwest Coast, and even into the Great Basin and the Great Plains. As the story has traveled through cultures and ecosystems over many centuries, individual storytellers have added cultural and local ecological details to the tale, creating countless variations. In The Blind Man and the Loon: The Story of a Tale, folklorist Craig Mishler goes back to 1827, tracing the story's emergence across Greenland and North America in manuscripts, books, and in the visual arts and other media such as film, music, and dance theater. Examining and comparing the story's variants and permutations across cultures in detail, Mishler brings the individual storyteller into his analysis of how the tale changed over time, considering how storytellers and the oral tradition function within various societies. Two maps unequivocally demonstrate the routes the story has traveled. The result is a masterful compilation and analysis of Native oral traditions that sheds light on how folktales spread and are adapted by widely diverse cultures.

Vikings in America

Vikings in America
Author: Graeme Davis
Publisher: Birlinn
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-05-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 085790065X

When Columbus claimed to have discovered America in 1492, and the Borgia Pope claimed it as a New World for Catholic Spain, the Vatican started a 500 hundred year conspiracy to conceal the true story of Viking America. In this groundbreaking work by the author of The Early English Settlement of Orkney and Shetland, the true extent of the Viking discovery and colonisation of the eastern seaboard of America is fully examined, taking into account the new archaeological, linguistic and DNA evidence which supplements the historic account. For four centuries or more, from their first visits around AD 1000 to the eve of the Columbus voyages, the Vikings explored and settled thousands of miles of the coasts and rivers of North America. From New York's Long Island to the Canadian High Arctic the New World was a playground for Viking adventurers. And the name the Vikings gave to this New World - America.

Historical Dictionary of the Inuit

Historical Dictionary of the Inuit
Author: Pamela R. Stern
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2013-09-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0810879123

This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Inuit provides a history of the indigenous peoples of North Alaska, arctic Canada including Labrador, and Greenland. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, places, events, institutions, and aspects of culture, society, economy, and politics. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Inuits.