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The Dream of the North: A Cultural History to 1920 by Peter Fjågesund Rodopi, 2014, $175 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter Every few years, a book comes out which offers -- or purports to offer -- a sweeping overview of the history of Arctic exploration and its historical significance. Most, however, take the explorers' accounts at face value, and are essentially elegant coffee-table books for armchair enthusiasts. When I first saw the title of this book, though encouraged by the subtitle "a cultural history," I was a bit skeptical -- how could any book, especially one just over five hundred and fifty pages in length, cover such a period, and cover it well? Peter Fjågesund manages this feat, and several others along the way: unlike other recent cultural histories, which -- rejecting the old grand narratives -- have cobbled together in their place a rather lumpy "new North" out of Scandinavian mythology, wandering antiquarians, and stuffed polar bears, Fjågesund is n

In 1852, the indefatigable Sherard Osborn -- a prolific if not always pleasant collaborator and author -- published his Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal . The stray leaves of this review, however, are of a quite different and more visually engaging variety: a chapbook and a small volume of illustrated cards inspired by words in in the Greenlandic Inuit dialect. Both share slight dimensions and lightness of weight; they seem as though they might almost have arrived at our doorstep via message balloons like t hose dispatched in 1851 in the search for Sir John Franklin, or perhaps fallen out onto our desk as we opened some more ponderous tome of Arctic journeys. We can only express our delight that they have. The first is Nancy Campbell's How to Say 'I Love You' in Greenlandic , a miniaturized version of her fine press art book of the same name. Campbell, who was a writer in residence at the Upernavik Museum in 2010, is presently the holder of the Lady Margaret Hall Visua

Graves of Ice: The Lost Franklin Expedition By John Wilson Scholastic Canada, CDN$ 14.99 Ages 9-12 Reviewed by Kristina Gehrmann In Graves of Ice , author John Wilson tells the story of Franklin’s Lost Expedition as part of the I am Canada series, a collection of stories about adventure and exploration geared toward a pre-teen audience. He has explored the same theme previously in the novel North with Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames ; and in the young-adult book Across Frozen Seas . A biography of Sir John Franklin - Traveller on Undiscovered Seas is also part of his repertoire of many historical books and novels.  The story is told from the viewpoint of one of the expedition's boys. Eighteen-year-old George Chambers can read and write, works as a clerk, and thanks to his father’s connections manages to get a spot aboard HMS Erebus, one of the ships to sail for the Arctic on Sir John Franklin’s much-awaited expedition. They are to leave England in May of 1845 to f

Shipwreck at Cape Flora: The expeditions of Benjamin Leigh Smith, England’s forgotten Arctic Explorer by P.J. Capelotti Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2013. Reviewed by Jonathan Dore Peter Capelotti, anthropologist at Penn State University, archaeologist of human space travel, sometime poet, and writer on many lesser-travelled byways in the exploration and exploitation of the seas, has now written the first biography of Benjamin Leigh Smith (1828–1913), who appears as a shadowy presence in the annals of late-19th-century Arctic exploration—mentioned in passing in the narratives of more famous names—but who is now given centre stage in an account that focuses on his three yachting expeditions to Svalbard and two to Franz Josef Land in the 1870s and 80s. It doesn’t take long to understand the reason for Leigh Smith’s ghostly absence from the feast of Arctic exploration history, and consequently the challenge that Capelotti set himself. The explorer was such a shunner of public att

In Those Days: Collected Writings on Arctic History Book 1: Inuit Lives by Kenn Harper Iqaluit: Inhabit Media. $19.95 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter "In those days" is the English equaivalent of Taissumani, the name of Kenn Harper's long-running history column in the Nunatsiaq News;  this volume collects from among them those dealing with significant Inuit figures. Many of them will be well-known to anyone with an interest in Arctic histories: "Joe" Ebierbing and "Hannah" Tookoolito, guides and translators for Charles Francis Hall; John Sakeouse, an interpreter and artist who accompanied John Ross on his 1818 voyage to northwest Greenland; and Hans Hendrik, who worked with Elisha Kent Kane, Isaac Israel Hayes, and was part of the party who survived on an ice-floe for six months after being separated from Hall's Polaris . But these are only three of the twenty-eight  life-stories in these remarkable, turnable pages. Harper, who has lived and worked i

In the Shadow of the Pole: An Early History of Arctic Expeditions, 1871-1912 By S.L. Osborne Toronto: Dundurn, CDN$26.99 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter The history and status of Canada's sovereignty over its Northern possessions has been the subject of many recent studies, most of them focussing on the current geopolitical anxieties over transport  (the Northwest Passages) and potential oil and mineral claims by other circumpolar nations. There have been some excellent overviews of the issues at stake (including Shelagh D. Grant's's  Polar Imperative , previously reviewed in these pages). And yet, oddly, there has been very little detailed attention paid to the history, much of it in the time of the Dominion, of the initial efforts by Canada to evaluate, establish, and reinforce its sovereignty. S.L. Osborne's book, despite its curious title (one is not quite sure what the word "Early" is meant to signify), does a fine job of recounting these little-known expe

Lost Beneath the Ice: The Story of HMS Investigator Text by Andrew Cohen, with images from Parks Canada Toronto: Dundurn CDN$29.99 Reviewed by Russell A. Potter The story of the rediscovery of the wreck of HMS Investigator by Parks Canada in the frozen waters of Mercy Bay in July of 2010 captured the imagination of the world, and evoked the 'heroic age' of Arctic exploration in a way no other recent event has managed. In part, this is due to the way in which a ship, even in its watery grave, evokes the endeavor of exploration with far more gravity and magnificence than any recent discoveries on land have done (last summer's toothbrush, found at Erebus Bay, comes to mind). But it's also due to the fact that the Parks Canada team was uniquely positioned to undertake a thorough on-site survey of the wreck, and to transmit the news and images of their discovery via the Internet and the news media almost as they were happening. And, it should be mentioned, the chief reason t